A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany: Musical Politics and the Berlin Jewish Culture League

A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany

A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany musical politics and the berlin jewish culture league Lily E. Hirsch

the university of michigan press ann arbor

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2010 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2013 2012 2011 2010

4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hirsch, Lily E., 1979– A Jewish orchestra in Nazi Germany : musical politics and the Berlin Jewish Culture League / Lily E. Hirsch. p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-472-11710-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Music—Political aspects—Germany—History—20th century. 2. Jüdischer Kulturbund. 3. National socialism and music. I. Title. ml3917.g3h57

2010

780.89'924043—dc22 978-0-472-02540-4 (e-book)

2009024922

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

vii 1

chapter one Why the League?

16

chapter two What Is Jewish Music? The League and the Dilemmas of Musical Identity

37

chapter three Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”: Weill, Schoenberg, and Bloch

60

chapter four “German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

87

chapter five Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

107

chapter six Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

131

epilogue: The Legacy of the League

148

Notes

159

Sources Consulted

215

Index

241

Acknowledgments

i am grateful to many institutions and individuals for their support of this project. During my years at Duke University, many wonderful professors—R. Larry Todd, Eric Meyers, James Rollestan, Peter McIsaac, Thomas Pfau, Louise Meintjes, Tamara Isenhour, Orin Starn, Ruth HaCohen, among others—helped give me the tools to approach the complex themes of this book. I received insightful feedback on this topic from my graduate adviser, Bryan Gilliam, and bene‹ted greatly from his wisdom as well as his tireless enthusiasm and humor. I am indebted to George Nemeth and Orin Starn, who responded to the complete book manuscript with invaluable criticisms and compliments. I also owe thanks to the students of my spring 2008 graduate seminar at Cleveland State University: Maria Brown, Jenna Lyle, Inna Saakova, Lisa Heinrich, Sarah Cox, Sharon Shaffer, Erin Ocampo, Geoff Young, and Aaron Carman. Their engagement with the course topic—musical politics in Nazi Germany— inspired me in many ways as I revised the current monograph. I could not have completed this book without the generous ‹nancial support of Duke University, the German Historical Institute, the Deutsche Akademische Austausch Dienst, the Leo Baeck Institute, and the Barry S. Brook Publication Endowment Fund of the American Musicological Survey. I would also like to acknowledge the Interlibrary Loan department at Cleveland State University, Stephan Dörschel and Werner Grünzweig at the Akademie der Künste, Caroline Waddell at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Miriam Intrator and Viola Voss at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, Howard Falksohn at the Wiener Library in London, the staff at the Centrum Judaicum Archiv in Berlin, and Pace Borza and Angelika Pirkl of the Arts and History Picture Library for their research assistance. I am indebted to Kerry McCarthy and Jill Sommers for their translation expertise. A signi‹cant dimension of my research was personal recollection. I would

viii

acknowledgments

like to thank several former members of the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Culture League) and their family members for sharing their remarkable histories with me: Hilda Klestadt Jonas, Renate Lenart, Susann Wisten-Weyl, Kurt Treitler, Margot Weintraub Sisman, and Peter Ohlson. I would also like to recognize Gail Prensky, for supplying contact information for several of these key informants as well as for sharing transcripts of her own remarkable interviews with former members, and the family of Dr. Anneliese Landau, who, through the efforts of family representative Sam Paechter, made available Anneliese Landau’s memoirs. I am forever indebted to my “book guru” Samantha Baskind, who gave me information and advice on the publishing process. My editor Chris Hebert of the University of Michigan Press was of course helpful in that regard as well. I owe him my gratitude for his work on my behalf. He greatly enriched the book while still allowing me to write the book I wanted to write. I would like to thank the editorial board of the University of Michigan Press as well as their anonymous reviewers. Their comments were a great help in the preparation of the ‹nal manuscript. Sections of chapter 4 of this book previously appeared in “The Berlin Jüdischer Kulturbund and the After-Life of Franz Schubert: Musical Appropriation and Identity Politics in Nazi Germany,” published in Musical Quarterly 90, 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2007). I am grateful to Musical Quarterly and Oxford University Press for permission to reprint this material. Thank you to Karen and Martin Hirsch, my parents Barry and Marlena Hirsch, as well as the Roelofs family for their belief in me and general excitement about this project. And ‹nally, I could not have completed this project, quite literally, without my husband Austin Roelofs. He offered his technological expertise in the preparation of ‹gures and tables and provided feedback on writing as well. He did all this while reminding me that there is a life worth enjoying beyond work.

A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany

Introduction

in his autobiography of 1921, jakob wassermann, the popular novelist, wrote, “I am a German, and I am a Jew, one as intensely and as completely as the other, inextricably bound together.”1 In the years preceding Hitler’s rise to power, such open embracing by a German Jew of his dual identity was far from the controversy it would soon become.2 At the time Wassermann’s declaration appeared—toward the beginning of the Weimar Republic—Jews in Germany were enjoying a period of relative prosperity. For some, success was made possible by the recent completion of Jewish emancipation— both in theory and practice. Indeed, for the ‹rst time, the German university system had opened all of its faculties to German Jews, and twenty-four German Jews were elected deputies to the Reichstag.3 The majority of the population considered Jewish, however, participated in bourgeois occupations, such as banking, medicine, law, and commerce. Some were particularly successful in these professions. In 1926, the Hertie Company, owned by Hermann Tietz, a German merchant of Jewish origins, purchased the KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens) and succeeded in turning it into the largest department store in Berlin.4 German Jews were also highly visible in the areas of ‹lm, theater, poetry, painting, architecture, radio, and music. A census of 1925 concluded that Jews— de‹ned by religion—constituted 0.9 percent of the German population; however, they made up 3 percent of those engaged in the combined theater and music trades, 4 percent of those engaged in the ‹lm industry, and 7 percent of a general category of visual artists and writers.5 Prominent within the ‹rst category was Max Reinhardt, Berlin’s most in›uential theater director, whose disciples included Leopold Jessner and Victor Barnowsky. While Wassermann was the best-known author of the older generation, Arnold Zweig and Alfred Döblin represented the bright future of new German ‹ction. Outstanding ex-

2

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

pressionist playwrights included Ernst Toller, Carl Sternhaim, and Franz Werfel.6 The painter and printmaker Max Lieberman, one of the most popular artists at the time, was also the president of the German Academy of Arts. Musicians included arguably the greatest pianist and cellist of the twentieth century, Artur Schnabel and Emanuel Feuermann, respectively, both of whom taught in Berlin during the latter years of the Weimar era; the conductor Bruno Walter, who was famous across Europe, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Otto Klemperer, the director and champion of new music at Berlin’s Kroll Opera; as well as the groundbreaking composers Arnold Schoenberg and Kurt Weill, to name a few. Much of their cultural activity was centered in Berlin, where a diverse array of artists participated in the period’s unprecedented cultural innovations. Indeed, “Weimar was Berlin. Berlin Weimar.”7 But, in Berlin, German Jews also had the option of contributing to Jewish-only endeavors—part of what some have termed a Jewish Renaissance.8 During the 1920s, Jewish leaders established in Berlin the United Synagogue Choirs, the Society of the Friends of Jewish Music, and the Juwal Publishing Company for Jewish Music.9 Also in the works was the Berlin Jewish Museum. Though it did not open its doors until 24 January 1933, the art historian Karl Schwarz had been working to expand a collection of Jewish art throughout the 1920s.10 Jewish schools were a part of this separate Jewish life. In 1922, there were two hundred Jewish schools in Germany, supported by Jews in rural communities, a section of Orthodox Jewry, and newly arrived Jews from eastern Europe.11 In Berlin alone, ‹ve new elementary schools opened between 1919 and 1927, and the number of students in Jewish schools rose from 1,170 in 1913 to 2,713 in 1930. Education for adults was included in this expansion. The Berlin Jewish Volkshochschule, founded at this time, was the ‹rst institution to offer extensive study of contemporary Judaism, including courses in Jewish economic history, sociology, and modern Jewish literature.12 As would soon become clear, the newfound success of many German Jews was not, however, universally accepted. With the rise of Jews in cultural and commercial spheres came the rise of anti-Semitism. This was not an all-encompassing German anti-Semitism. Rather, anti-Jewish attitudes were inspired, for some, by socioeconomic concerns. When hyperin›ation in 1922 endangered ‹nancial stability, many looked for a scapegoat, blaming the economic crisis on “Jewish” capitalism.13 For others, anti-Semitism was a cultural code. Jews were seen as a threat to social status, prestige, and cultural hegemony.14 Common in the 1880s and 1890s, this perceived danger was recognized with new urgency in response to the humiliation of the Versailles Peace

Introduction

3

Treaty, signed 28 June 1919, which both blamed and punished Germany for World War I. Though anti-Jewish attitudes had been peripheral and local before World War I, Germany’s defeat and economic instability provided the foundation for a more virulent and widespread anti-Semitism, particularly in parties of the Right: the German National People’s Party (DNVP) and German People’s Party (DVP).15 In more radical movements on the Right, this antiSemitism even erupted in violence, especially in 1923, before the economy began to stabilize in 1924. These pogroms against Jews had precedents in Germany’s past but also foreshadowed, in some ways, the future.16 In this way, the Weimar era was one of con›icting tendencies. Amid increasing anti-Semitism, German Jews enjoyed success and new freedom. Choice was part of this freedom: German Jews could participate in the era’s general cultural creativity, embrace Jewish undertakings, or both, depending on their ideals. That freedom disappeared in 1933. On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was of‹cially appointed chancellor of Germany. His party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or NSDAP, continued to grow in power during the early months of 1933. With the burning of the Reichstag on 27 February, Hitler had the state of emergency he needed to demolish the parliamentary government established in Weimar on 11 August 1919. On 23 March, Hitler ensured the acceptance of the enabling laws, which allowed him to ratify any decree he wanted without parliamentary approval. One of the earliest results was the Law for the Reconstitution of the Civil Service of 7 April 1933, passed six days after a boycott of Jewish businesses. By means of the law’s Aryan paragraph,“civil servants who are not of Aryan ancestry” were to be dismissed. This measure prevented non-Aryans—de‹ned at that time as any person descended from a Jewish parent or grandparent—from holding positions in the public sphere, especially at cultural institutions such as state-run music conservatories, opera houses, concert halls, and theaters. At ‹rst, upon Reich president Paul von Hindenburg’s insistence, Jewish front soldiers—combat veterans of World War I—and employees who entered the civil service by August 1914 were exempt. Often ignored, these exemptions were eventually nulli‹ed with Hindenburg’s death in August 1934, when Hitler combined the position of chancellor and president into one person, the Führer.17 Conductors, singers, orchestral musicians, and even opera administrators of Jewish descent had no recourse and, with few exceptions,18 their employment was terminated based solely on perceived racial incompatibility. The radio, press, and Reich Chamber of Music suffered under similar restrictions. The Chamber of Music was one of seven departments in the greater

4

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer), established in September 1933 and directed by Joseph Goebbels, whom Hitler had already appointed as Reich Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda in March 1933.19 The Reich Chamber of Culture supervised and coordinated all artistic activity in Nazi Germany. To take part in music at the time, membership in the Reich Chamber of Music was obligatory. A decree of 1 November 1933, however, barred entrance to anyone who did not have the required “reliability and suitability”—a clause that was to affect gypsies, nonwhites, political and social deviants, but especially Jews.20 Even before these legislative attempts to oust Jews from the cultural realm, there were high-pro‹le acts to intimidate and exclude Jewish musicians. On 16 March, Bruno Walter arrived for rehearsal only to ‹nd the Gewandhaus concert hall locked. Fearing he might have similar problems at an upcoming concert in Berlin with the Philharmonic Orchestra, Walter requested police protection for the event. His request was denied, and it was made clear that his safety was in jeopardy. Walter Funk, the secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, explained that the concert could only take place with an Aryan conductor. And it did, with none other than Richard Strauss in Walter’s place.21 Walter canceled his German engagements and eventually emigrated from Austria to the United States. At this time, Arnold Schoenberg was similarly forced to resign from his position in Berlin at the Prussian Academy and ›ee Germany. Many composers, including Schoenberg, ended up in the United States: Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Ernst Toch, Ernst Kr&enek, Paul Dessau, and Alexander von Zemlinsky, among others. Some, like Weill and Korngold, prospered in exile.22 Others, such as Hanns Eisler, a former student of Schoenberg, emigrated only to discover a similar climate of fear and intolerance. In 1948, he fell victim to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts and decided to return to the newly formed German Democratic Republic.23 The music Jewish composers left behind in Nazi Germany was generally banned, along with the music of those deceased, such as Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and Gustav Mahler. Due in part to a certain degree of disorganization and competition within Nazi of‹ces, some concerts planned before Hitler’s takeover went on as scheduled, despite “Jewish” content.24 Still, the regime, for the most part, did not tolerate performances of music by Jewish composers, and, with some degree of error, anything that could be called Jewish music disappeared from “Aryan” concert venues. In the eyes of many, the Jewish presence in Germany’s musical life—both physically and sonically—was at an end, and with it, centuries of Jewish involvement in German culture.

Introduction

5

But was it? What about Jewish musicians who could not emigrate? There were many musicians not quite famous enough to earn a post outside of Germany, let alone enough money to pursue one. There were also many who did not want to leave their homes. Some may have been under the delusion of protection: perhaps they were one of the “privileged” Jews married to an Aryan or a Jewish front soldier, who thought war medals could appeal to German reason. Many others simply could not believe the Nazi storm would last long. The regime’s barbarism seemed to them impossible in the twentieth century. Were there any employment options in 1933 for these newly unemployed artists? The story of those who remained is far from clear. As several studies have shown, Jews did continue playing music during the Third Reich—within the concentration camps, especially the Ghetto Theresienstadt, or Terezín.25 But were there any opportunities for music making before the concentration camps? What do we know about these highly volatile years between the Weimar era and the Holocaust? During the years 1933 through 1941, there was one signi‹cant site in Nazi Germany in which Jews were still allowed and, paradoxically, encouraged to participate in music as well as theater, both as performers and as audience members. This was the Jewish Culture League (Jüdischer Kulturbund), originally called the Culture League of German Jews (Kulturbund Deutscher Juden). In the English-speaking world, little is known about the Jewish Culture League apart from the work of Martin Goldsmith in the popular memoir The Inextinguishable Symphony. But it is time we changed that. In this extraordinary organization, Nazi of‹cials actively supported Jewish music and Jewish musicians—the very in›uences they sought to suppress elsewhere. This monograph focuses on the Jewish Culture League’s musical performances, though theatrical production was also a part of its activities. Music had a more signi‹cant place in the League’s repertoire and Germany as a whole. That is to say, music had cultural currency in the so-called land of music and therefore garnered special attention during the Third Reich. Hitler’s regime recognized unique powers in music. Joseph Goebbels, for one, saw music as the most sensual of the arts. In his speech of 28 May 1938, entitled “Ten Principles of German Music Creativity” (“Zehn Grundsätze deutschen Musikschaffens”), he explained: “For this reason, music affects the heart and emotions more than the intellect. Where then could the heart of a nation beat stronger than in the huge masses, in which the heart of a nation has found its true home?”26 This was not a new sentiment. In the nineteenth century, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had similarly privileged music as the expression of the noume-

6

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

nal realm—the will—and as such the manifestation of the essence of the world rather than merely the perceivable world.27 Music invites such formulations. It exists only in time, giving it a ›exibility that other arts, in physical form, do not have. In this book, we will see how the Nazis and members of the League took advantage of the ambiguity of music for a variety of ends: music de‹ned who individuals and groups were and were not—excluding and including in troubling ways; it became a place of refuge, catharsis, and hope, but also a distraction from reality. By analyzing the League’s music repertoire we gain insight into these various processes as a lens onto the League itself as well as political maneuvering and strategies of survival (both psychological and physical) during the period. This focus offers us a fuller understanding of music’s special ability to accommodate national and political causes. On a more local level, we gain new insight into certain composers’ reception in Nazi Germany—from the perspective of the oppressor as well as the oppressed. This latter aim is worthwhile in and of itself: reception at this time informed many of the founding texts in the burgeoning study of musicology, originally a German discipline.28 With these objectives, this study asks: What purposes did music serve in the League and Nazi politics? What is the place of music in times of danger? What roles can music play in processes of power? It also asks of the League more directly: Why would Nazi leaders support the League? Why would they encourage Jewish music? What music did the Jewish League leaders program as Jewish music? What was the level of collaboration between the League and the Nazi regime? To answer these questions, and many more, we must start at the beginning. The Jewish Culture League grew from various strategies of Jewish integration and survival from the German Jewish past—strategies that centered on the arts. Historically, Jews embraced German culture—the arts and language—as the point of entrance into German society as a whole. Under attack, Jews assigned even greater importance to involvement in German culture as a means to assert their Germanness as well as their rights as people in Germany. In this artistic sphere, a German-Jewish symbiosis—“that is, an association with mutual bene‹ts”—did exist in Germany.29 This relationship assumes a categorical separation of Jews and Germans that did not exist postemancipation, making it dif‹cult to de‹ne.30 Still, in general terms, German Jewish artists, writers, and philosophers were proud of their German heritage and enriched Germany by contributing to a German culture, or what was considered German culture at the time. In the early nineteenth century, the model for this form of Jewish integration was the great Jewish philosopher and grandfather of the composer

Introduction

7

Felix Mendelssohn, Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86). He translated the Pentateuch and Psalms into German to facilitate assimilation into Germany.31 In the ‹nal decade of Mendelssohn’s life, many Jews followed his lead, embracing German as their secular language as well as the concept of Bildung, de‹ned in the spirit of Goethe as both a process and a product imperceptibly “ushering its subjects to states of greater complexity and self-awareness.”32 However, this trajectory of assimilation through Bildung, a transformation achieved most often through German literature, philosophy, and the arts,33 did not necessitate a religious change or abandonment of Jewish traditions. Indeed, Jewish assimilation in the spirit of the nineteenth century could be described as what we call today acculturation: “the acceptance of certain cultural norms while retaining an ethnic content in familial and communal life.”34 Throughout the nineteenth century, German and Jewish culture could stand side by side without merging.35 Even in Orthodox homes, including those of rabbis, parents would sing both Hebrew and German songs with their children, and, on of‹cial occasions, leading Orthodox personalities would cite both Talmudic dicta and quotations from the work of Goethe, Schiller, and even Richard Wagner.36 But this more inclusive means of integration was only part of the story. There were more extreme reactions on both sides that add inevitable layers of complexity to the fundamental idea of German-Jewish symbiosis. In the ‹rst decade of the nineteenth century, some Jews were more eager to fully integrate into the society of the German states.37 Opting for what Heinrich Heine called “the entrance ticket to European culture,” these Jews turned away from Jewish traditions and converted to Christianity. It is up for debate whether or not conversion really ensured acceptance. A Jew would always be a Jew, according to many at the time. Not even the initial emancipation of Jews in 1812 would change that. In fact, emancipation and conversion in many ways created a greater divide. Many Germans resented the Jews even more as they began to thoroughly assimilate—as they began to resemble Germans—through participation in German culture, conversion, and German citizenship, which was suspended in 1815 with the defeat of Napoleon. With this perceived threat, the question of German national identity took on a new urgency. If a Jew could be German, how did one de‹ne Germanness? This challenge to national identity provoked adherents of the revolutionary anti-Semite Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the father of an aggressive nationalism based on Jew hatred. Some of his followers created student Burschenschaften, anti-Jewish fraternities that eventually incited the Hep-Hep riots of 1819, a series of pogroms against the Jews. After this outbreak of violence, the jurist Eduard Gans, Jewish scholar Leopold Zunz,

8

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

and merchant Moses Moser met to consider ways to reduce such Judeophobia. They decided to establish the Society for Culture and Science of the Jews (Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden) in an attempt to introduce Jews to German culture and at the same time reinforce Jewish identity. Like so many at the time, they continued to view German culture as their chance for acceptance. To this end, they hoped their organization would form a bridge between Jews and their German home, eliminating the image of Jew as outsider.38 While many maintained this tradition of assimilation, there were those at the turn of the century who began to forge a new path—a new answer to the “Jewish Question” that embraced Jewish culture as a part of German culture. Martin Buber, as a young man, called for a Jewish secular “renaissance.” He also introduced Hasidism, a tradition of ecstasy and mysticism, which was seen at the time as a new vital force within Judaism.39 Then, in 1896, Theodor Herzl described The Jewish State, effectively founding modern Zionism and Jewish nationalism.40 By the Weimar era, as Jewish nationalism took root, a new picture of the ideal Jew emerged. In literature and art, the “good” Jew was now the authentic, east European, or Orthodox Jew. In contrast, the “bad” Jew was generally seen as the assimilated or acculturated Jew, epitomized by Moses Mendelssohn.41 In this vein, certain composers, like Heinrich Schalit and Hugo Adler, turned back to music associated with the world of the authentic Jew— Jewish folk song and synagogue music—and combined it with modern musical elements of the time. Still, most composers advanced their musical ideas with little thought to Jewish nationalism in music. Arnold Schoenberg, with his twelve-tone system, built upon and contributed to what he viewed as the German musical tradition, and Kurt Weill, who featured jazz and a Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity) in his works, created innovative musical trends and possibilities for musicians regardless of nationality. With the social and economic turmoil that followed World War I, however, this unprecedented experimentation did not go unchallenged. There were those that sought to preserve the status quo as well as those with more conservative responses. This latter group included proponents of Germany’s past artistic glories—epitomized by Richard Wagner and the late Romantic style— such as Max von Schillings, Siegmund von Hausegger, Hermann Walterhausen, and the composer Hans P‹tzner. In the article “The New Aesthetic of Musical Impotence—A Symptom of Decay,” P‹tzner, in the spirit of Wagner, blamed the new musical experiments, and speci‹cally the Jews, for perceived decay and national disintegration.42 Many of a similar mind-set gathered around Bayreuth with the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival in 1924, after ten years.

Introduction

9

Their cultural and political extremism gained momentum and, through various political intrigues, culminated in Hitler’s of‹cial appointment as chancellor of Germany. The anti-Semitism that German Jews had long fought was now backed by law. In response, German Jews would once again look to culture, speci‹cally the Jewish Culture League. This organization would become a testing ground for Jews confronting their new status as pariah. In the pressure cooker of Nazi politics, it would also see compressed Jewish responses to anti-Semitism from the past: assimilation through German culture and the expression of Jewish nationalism. In the early months of 1933, however, Kurt Baumann (1907–83) could not have known all this. Between 1928 and 1933, Baumann, a native of Berlin, served as a director’s assistant at the Berlin Staatsoper, Volksbühne, and Städtische Oper (Municipal Opera) in Charlottenburg, Berlin. When he was dismissed from his duties, in 1933 at age twenty-six, he developed the preliminary plan for the League, to be set in Berlin.43 I based my idea of founding a Jewish cultural circle on very simple numbers. At the time, 175,000 Jews lived in Berlin alone, many other big cities had similar concentrations, percentage wise.44

In 1933, Berlin was home to approximately one-third of Germany’s Jews and thus could support Jewish-only organizations. Berlin, as the setting for the League, had other advantages. It had a diverse and varied population—a melting pot of ethnic and professional groups. By the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of immigrants had settled in what had quickly become the artistic capital of Germany after its uni‹cation in 1871. This rapid growth had precluded a homogeneous sense of identity within the city.45 In the 1920s, Berlin became synonymous with radicalism, radiating an even more fragmented identity divided by diverse, ever-shifting neighborhoods that were separate in political af‹liation, social hierarchy, and even rules of behavior.46 This history shaped the Nazi regime’s relationship to the city, which, as revealed in depictions of Berlin in Nazi cinema, was rather ambivalent. On the one hand, Berlin was home. But, on the other hand, it was a cosmopolitan haven of cultural disintegration and pollution.47 Moreover, the regime had to temper its anti-Jewish persecution in Berlin: events in larger cities were more likely to attract the attention of the foreign press and denunciation abroad. Though Baumann’s plan for the League was in part a response to the growing

10

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

marginalization of Jews in Germany, Berlin was less affected by the Nazi threat and proved more tolerant than many smaller German towns and cities.48 Berlin had also witnessed the Jewish endeavors of the Weimar era, which could act as models for the League. These earlier undertakings were fundamentally different from the League, however. While German Jews could embrace or reject Jewish institutions before Hitler’s takeover, after 1933, the freedom of choice no longer existed. The League would become the only option for many Jewish musicians, besides emigration or unemployment, and as such an umbrella organization for an extremely varied population. This was also true of other Jewish undertakings during the Third Reich, like the Jewish schools, which changed after 1933 to include a heterogeneous Jewish community—eastern European, rural, Orthodox, assimilated—forced out of the German educational system.49 With this new reality in mind—one without the freedom of the previous decade—it is not surprising that Baumann feared his plan for the League would not be supported. Zionists, then only a minority in the Jewish population, might insist that the organization conduct its cultural activities in Yiddish or Hebrew. The majority of German Jews in Berlin, however, were assimilated and possessed little knowledge of Yiddish or Hebrew. They could respond to the suggestion of a pure Jewish cultural circle with the cry: “We’re not going voluntarily into the ghetto!” (“Wir gehen nicht freiwillig ins Ghetto”).50 Nevertheless, Baumann worked out a detailed proposal within two weeks and contacted Kurt Singer, whose assistant he had been at the Municipal Opera.51 Baumann was wise to contact Singer. Singer, born on 11 October 1885 in Berent (West Prussia), had envisioned a similar organization. Though a Jewish liberal democrat, he was the perfect spokesperson for such an endeavor. He had studied medicine and musicology in Berlin, where he became a neurologist. Combining his interests in medicine and music, in 1913, he founded the “Berliner Aerztechor” (Doctor’s Choir), which he also conducted. During World War I, he was a military doctor, earning an Iron Cross for his service.52 After the war, he acted as music editor for the Berlin newspaper Vorwärts, the central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. He also wrote and published such works as Wesen und Heilwirkung der Musik (The Healing Power of Music) and Berufskrankheiten der Musiker (The Occupational Illness of Musicians) and produced valuable research on German folk song, Wagner, and Anton Bruckner. In 1927, his diverse musical accomplishments earned him a post as assistant Intendant of Berlin’s Municipal Opera under Heinz Tietjen. He served as the Opera’s Intendant from 1930 to 1931.53

Introduction

11

As impressive as he was professionally, his personality was perhaps even more valuable. He had great charisma and a commanding presence with a “daring” mane of white hair.54 The theater critic, League member, and ‹rst League historian Herbert Freeden (born Friedenthal, 1909) recalled, “He was a man who could lead people and a born orator who could enthuse an audience”55 (see ‹g. 1). Baumann and Singer revised the initial proposal for the League,56 which

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 1. Kurt Singer. Photo 73078. Courtesy of the Jüdisches Museum Berlin.

12

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

they did not plan as a long-term venture. (They, like so many at the time, did not believe Nazi rule could last long.) They then recruited other Jewish luminaries, such as Berlin’s chief rabbi Leo Baeck, journalist Werner Levie, and conductor Joseph Rosenstock. When Baumann approached theater critic Julius Bab with the project, Bab was justi‹ably skeptical: “Dürfen wir denn das?” (“Are we allowed to do it?”).57 Indeed, it was not clear how the organization would win the Nazi government’s sponsorship. Singer struggled to generate interest within various government of‹ces and was eventually invited to meet with Hans Hinkel. Hinkel had been the founder and leader of the Berlin chapter of the Combat League for German Culture (Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur). Established in 1928, Alfred Rosenberg led the organization in its quest to defend “the value of the German essence” in the “midst of present-day cultural decadence” and promote every “authentic [arteigene] expression of German cultural life.”58 Despite its rapid disintegration, the Combat League helped establish much of the Nazi agenda in the cultural realm, setting as priorities anti-Semitism and artistic conservatism.59 It also gave a ‹rm foundation to certain activists, such as Hinkel, who had been appointed head of the Prussian Theater Commission by the new Prussian minister Hermann Göring immediately after Hitler’s ascension to power. Hinkel’s position would change rapidly in the early years of the Third Reich alongside the Gleichschaltung (coordination) of artistic and professional associations. By mid-July 1933, when Göring’s power was supplanted by Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, Hinkel became part of Bernhard Rust’s Prussian Cultural Ministry.60 In May 1935, when Rust, too, lost much of his in›uence over artistic affairs, Goebbels appointed Hinkel as a third Reichskulturwalter in the central of‹ce of the Reich Chamber of Culture. In July 1935, Goebbels added to his responsibilities the supervision of the cultural activity of non-Aryan citizens living in the Reich.61 A press release announced this appointment and Hinkel’s new title as that of Special Commissioner for the Supervision and Monitoring of the Activities in the Cultural and Intellectual Spheres of Non-Aryans Living in the Territory of the German Reich.62 In April 1933, however, still in Göring’s employ, Hinkel began negotiating with Singer the operating terms for the creation of the League, which included several stipulations: the League was to be staffed only by Jewish artists and ‹nanced by the all-Jewish audiences through a monthly fee; only the Jewish press was allowed to report on League events, further isolating Jewish activities from the racially accepted German population; League programs were to be submitted to Hinkel for approval before performance. This latter requirement

Introduction

13

allowed the regime to promote the music they saw as appropriate for a Jewish organization—Jewish music, or music that ‹t Hinkel’s demonstrated de‹nition of Jewish music—a composition by a Jewish composer or with a Jewish/Old Testament theme.63 In the middle of May, satis‹ed with these conditions, Hinkel summoned Singer to a ‹nal meeting with Göring, who warned, “If all of you do everything right and obey Herr Hinkel, then everything will go well. If all of you misbehave, then there’ll be trouble, you know that.”64 In this way, the League received the Nazi government’s “blessing,”65 and one of the most paradoxical partnerships in German history began.66 This partnership, between the regime and the League, had a speci‹c corollary in the symbiotic relationship of Singer and Hinkel. Each needed the other to meet his goals. But it could not have been easy for Hinkel to accept this dependence on a Jew. Throughout their work together, Hinkel showed a strange ambivalence toward Singer and Jews in general. Despite his political and ideological convictions, Hinkel was considerate in his dealings with Jewish League employees, especially Singer, for whom he had a genuine respect.67 Baumann credits this to Hinkel’s early school days. As Hinkel con‹ded to Baumann, the three best students then were Jewish. Baumann concluded, “That explains better than anything else the curiously divided position that Hinkel had regarding the Jews and Jewishness—on the one hand admiration and on the other hand contempt-‹lled hate.”68 In her play Charlotte: Life or Theater? Charlotte Salomon captured this ambivalence on the Nazi side in her depiction of the regime’s response to the League plan and Singer, or as she renamed him Dr. Singsong: “Yes, this is a good project, he seems to be just the man. A pity he’s a Jew—must see if I can’t make him an honorary Aryan.”69 Chapter 1 explores this complicated beginning: the Nazi regime’s work with Singer, support of the League’s founding, and promotion of Jewish music. Within the League, the Nazi support of Jewish music would incite a fascinating debate about the nature of Jewish music among a large and diverse Jewish population, forced as never before—the freedom of the Weimar era gone—to follow one path. Chapter 2 discusses League operation in Berlin from 1933 through 1941 and the various factions in this League debate on Jewish music and Jewish identity. Chapters 3 through 6 focus on the resulting musical programs—the debate in practice. Chapter 3 examines the League’s performance of Jewish music. Why was Kurt Weill, a Jew, banned from the League? What does this proscription say about Schoenberg’s unpopularity and conceptions of authentic Jewish music? These questions shed light on Bloch’s standing in the League and the condi-

14

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

tions of Jewish musical authenticity at the time. Chapter 4 focuses on Schubert’s popularity in the Jewish organization (he was the second most performed composer in League history). Several factors account for his prominence: he was Austrian, was viewed sympathetically by League members, and he composed several pieces considered Jewish. Chapter 5 concentrates on the standing of two other non-Jewish composers, Handel and Verdi. These two composers ‹gured prominently in Nazi and League politics, and this chapter analyzes both groups’ attempts to appropriate the composers for their own ends. Mahler and Mendelssohn are the subjects of chapter 6. Mendelssohn was the most performed composer in the League. To a lesser extent, the League also presented Mahler’s music, especially in its later years. Despite Mahler’s and Mendelssohn’s treatment today as Jewish, for the most part the League did not consider their music authentically Jewish. This ‹nal case study offers a unique perspective from which to assess the postwar changes in their reception histories as well as the ›uid nature of reception and ascriptions of national orientation within it. The close of the book discusses the League’s ultimate legacy. This latter consideration has inspired heated debate among former League members and scholars. Summing up the controversy, Martin Goldsmith asks, “did the [Culture League] lend a much-needed aura of legitimacy to the gangster regime?”70 In short, was the League a means of survival or an immoral form of collaboration with the Nazis? Hilda Klestadt Jonas, a former performer in the League’s Düsseldorf branch, con‹ded that it was only upon reading Goldsmith’s The Inextinguishable Symphony, for which she was interviewed, that she learned people believe the members of the League had been used by the Nazis. “I never looked at the Kulturbund as a creation of the Nazis,” she explained. “It’s the ‹rst time I heard that, when I read the book . . . and I’m not really sure whether it’s correct or not.”71 But Bert Bernd, who appeared with the League from 1934 until his emigration in December 1938, was more resolute: “We were little ‹gures on the Nazi chessboard, ‹gures moved around to create illusions. The whole thing was a lie from beginning to end.”72 This debate parallels dispute surrounding the Judenräte, Jewish councils ‹rst established by the Nazis in every Jewish community of ten thousand or more in occupied Poland in September 1939. The councils acted as intermediaries, carrying out the regime’s oppressive dictates by providing forced labor for German factories. Eventually they even delivered fellow Jews to the trains destined for concentration camps. Their activity has been both praised for reinforcing “the Jews’ power of endurance in their struggle for survival” and vili‹ed

Introduction

15

for reaching “the morally dangerous borderline of collaboration.”73 One of the earliest ‹gures to condemn the councils was Hannah Arendt. She concluded, “To a Jew, this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark chapter.”74 Historians since Arendt have approached this topic with greater sensitivity. Dominick LaCapra, for one, reminds us to analyze “the impossible conditions created” for the Jewish councils by the Nazis.75 No matter “the conditions in which victims were induced to participate in victimization,” there is always “a signi‹cant difference between those put in an impossible situation—however questionably they may have responded to it—and those who put them there.”76 This is a valuable consideration as we examine the League as well. However, the League was established much earlier than the councils, and its legacy is ultimately quite different. Through extensive research, including archival investigation and interviews with former members, this study examines the League on its own terms and avoids making snap decisions about the signi‹cance of such a complex organization. In doing so, we learn that the League cannot be described as wholly positive or negative but rather a combination of the two—a grey zone. Admitting this lack of resolution has certain advantages. To understand fully the many aspects of the Jewish Culture League, we must examine all the contradictory points involved and hold them in our minds. Though it is a natural impulse to seek to resolve paradox, in some cases such a quest does a disservice to the reality of ideas and events in history. As proponents of dialectical thinking have found, “Voices in con›ict may each grasp a partial truth.”77 Acknowledging and examining paradox, in this case, leads to a more complete consideration of the extraordinary Jewish Culture League and the light it sheds on Nazi politics (musical and otherwise), Jewish survival, and racial/national categories in music.

chapter one

Why the League?

anneliese landau was a musicologist by training. she studied at the University of Halle with Arnold Schering and followed him to Berlin when he succeeded Hermann Abert at the Berlin University (now Humboldt-Universität). After she received her PhD in 1930, she indexed recently published articles for the Zeitschriftenschau of the Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft and created annotated indexes of articles about Bach and Handel for the Bach-Jahrbuch and Händel-Jahrbuch, respectively. She also gave musicological lectures on Berlin radio, on the Leipzig-Dresden network, and on radio in southern Germany. Then, in early 1933, the Nazis forced the cancellation of contracts with all Jews in broadcasting. Landau had an appointment at the radio station on the day of her contract’s termination and recalls her gradual comprehension of the new Nazi decree: “Do you mean, I cannot broadcast any longer because I am Jewish?”1 After considering immigration to Paris, Anneliese found work as a lecturer with the League during a chance meeting with its leader Kurt Singer. Looking into a window of a store on “Tauentzienstrasse,” I suddenly see a familiar face appearing next to mine in the re›ection of the window: Dr. Kurt Singer. . . . That afternoon he spoke to me about his idea of a [Culture League]: he would call together all Jewish musicians, actors, lecturers and ask them to become part of an organization which would offer drama, opera, and lectures to a Jewish membership.2

Singer had originally intended to offer Landau’s position to Alfred Einstein, the music critic of the Berliner Tageblatt and editor of the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, but he had already left Germany. With Landau’s musicological accomplishments and success on the radio, Singer saw her as a worthy sub16

Why the League?

17

stitute. She accepted the appointment and, one afternoon that July, attended a meeting in Singer’s home—evidently without the young League originator Kurt Baumann—as the only woman involved in the founding of the League. When I entered the room I found myself surrounded by a serene, older generation, all men with long beards . . . they all looked friendly at me, assuming I was the secretary who had come to take minutes. Then Dr. Singer took a deep breath and said: “Please meet Dr. Anneliese Landau,” they all jumped up like one man and remained standing til I was seated. . . . This meeting was the beginning of the [Jewish Culture League].3

At the beginning of September 1933, the League had eight separate sections. Landau (see ‹g. 2) gave regular speeches on music, which were illustrated by League performers. She was part of the League’s lecture department, which included Julius Bab, Arthur Eloesser, Max Osborn, Julius Guttmann, and Ernst Landsberger. Bab also directed the drama department, which was associated with the dramaturgy department. Heinz Condell, Hans Sondheimer, and Werner Levie supervised the décor and costume division, the technical department, and the management division, respectively. Levie, who worked as economic editor of the Vossische Zeitung (a liberal Berlin newspaper) until 1933, also acted as League secretary. He would assume a more prominent role later, as Singer’s replacement in 1938.4 Along with Singer, Joseph Rosenstock led the opera department, in which Baumann also worked. Rosenstock’s participation in the League points to the high caliber of the League as a musical organization. A child prodigy as a pianist, Rosenstock attended the Krakow Conservatory and, from 1912, the University and Academy of Music in Vienna. In 1919, he became the deputy conductor of the choir of the Vienna Philharmonic and, in 1920, taught at the College of Music in Berlin. In 1927, he succeeded Otto Klemperer at the Staatstheater in Wiesbaden and, in 1929, he served as guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. From 1930 until his dismissal in 1933, he worked at the Mannheim National Theater.5 The concert department, linked with the opera division, similarly bene‹ted from talented leadership. The department was headed again by Rosenstock and Singer but also by the concert director Michael Taube, who had been Bruno Walter’s assistant at the Municipal Opera in Berlin.6 Taube acted as conductor of the League’s small orchestra until he immigrated to Palestine at the end of 1934. After his departure, Rosenstock as its conductor worked to expand the

18

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Fig. 2. Anneliese Landau. Courtesy of Sam Paechter and the Landau Family.

group.7 When he too left, for Tokyo, in 1936, Hans Wilhelm Steinberg replaced him. After only three months, Steinberg traveled to Moscow and then Tel Aviv to conduct the newly founded Palestine Symphony Orchestra, established by the violinist Bronislaw Huberman and later known as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Though he was scheduled to return to the Berlin League in February 1937, he continued to work in Palestine and eventually emigrated to the United States in 1938. There, as William Steinberg, he conducted in San Francisco, Pittsburg, Boston, and New York, at the Metropolitan Opera. In Berlin, he was succeeded by Rudolf Schwarz, who had served as the main conductor under chief music director Josef Krips at the Badisches Landestheater in Karlsruhe from 1925 to 1933.8

Why the League?

19

The League’s management leased as its performance hall the Berliner Theater on Charlottenstrasse, in the northwest corner of Berlin, from the Berlin city hall (see ‹g. 3). The building, badly in need of renovation, had been built in 1850 for the Renz circus. From 1908 through 1923, Carl Meinhard and Rudolf Bernauer used it as a music theater.9 After two years as the League’s home, in 1935, the League lost the theater, unable to renew its lease. League operations were then transferred to a slightly smaller space, the Herrnfeld-Theater on the Kommandantenstrasse (see ‹g. 4). Beginning in 1906, this theater had served as the ‹rst Yiddish theater in Berlin under the direction of its founders, the brothers Anton and David “Donat” Herrnfeld. When David passed away in 1916, Anton gave up the theater business. From 1921 through 1922, the site housed the Yiddish-speaking Jüdisches Künstlertheater. At the end of the 1920s, the theater closed in economic crisis. The theater, now hosting the League, reopened on 2 October 1935. League management also had a hall built next to the theater for chamber concerts, which opened on 28 November 1937 and began showing ‹lms on 24 September 1939.10 With its mounting expenses, the League struggled economically. The League was not entitled to the government subsidy enjoyed by accepted Aryan musical institutions. Instead, membership dues were to fund these performance spaces as well as the salaries of its staff of artists. By October 1933, the League had about 12,500 members. This number increased to around 20,000 during the winter, approximately 10 percent of the Jewish population in Berlin. From 1934 through 1937, membership remained at about 18,500 with new members replacing those that left.11 This League audience included Jews of varied religious and national convictions, though they generally shared a belief in their Germanness. Economically, they represented for the most part the lower echelon of the middle class.12 This necessitated a modest monthly fee of 2.50 RM (Reichsmark) per person, though it would soon rise to 2.85 RM. Since every member paid the same dues, seating rotated to give everyone a turn in the front rows. Kurt Treitler, who was a member as a youth of the Berlin League, remembers the system as “very egalitarian.”13 The average monthly wage for members of the opera and theater ensemble was set at 200 RM, and for members of the orchestra, 180 RM. League leaders advertised for these positions throughout Berlin: at synagogues, cafés, and music schools that still allowed Jews. From a total of 2,000 submissions, management hired for its ‹rst season 35 actors and singers, 35 orchestral musicians, 22 chorus members, 10 female dancers, 25 technical staff, 26 box and cloakroom attendants, 10 administrative staff, and several manual workers. Approximately 200 or

Fig. 3. The Berliner Theater. Photograph from akg-images.

Fig. 4. Kulturbund Theater on the Kommandantenstrasse. Photograph from Bildarchiv Pisarek / akg-images.

Why the League?

21

10 percent of applicants found employment that ‹rst year, in addition to guest conductors, concert soloists, and lecturers.14 One of the newly employed musicians was Wilhelm (Hans-Roland) Guttmann, a baritone, born in Berlin in 1886. From 1925 until his dismissal, he had been a member of the Municipal Opera in Berlin.15 He then sang with the League and, as we will discuss in chapter 6, died on the League stage in 1941. Another prominent German singer was Paula Lindberg, a leading concert contralto. Her father had forbidden her to have a career in music. But, after his death, she began studying singing and drama at the Mannheim College of Music. She was discovered there by Paul Hindemith, who wrote for her the song cycle Die junge Magd (1922). After 1933, despite steps she had taken to avoid anti-Semitism— her name change from Levi to Lindberg—she could appear only with the League.16 These performers rehearsed diligently during the day and spent most evenings either performing or attending other League events as audience members. League members were admitted to League performances only after presenting their ticket and identi‹cation badge proving their Jewish descent at the door. This regulation also applied to performances of private choirs within Jewish communities in Berlin, led by Alexander Weinbaum, Leo Kopf, and Ludwig Misch, for example, as well as events supported, often in conjunction with the League, by the Jüdische Winterhilfe (Jewish Winter Help), an organization founded in 1935 to provide aid to German Jews in need during the winter.17 After passing inspection, League members were then eligible to attend two cultural events per month—an opera and their choice of a lecture in the ‹elds of philosophy, art, religion, or music in one month and, the next month, a drama and a concert. The League’s ‹rst unof‹cial musical offering took place on 22 May 1933 at the synagogue on Prinzregentenstrasse in Berlin’s Wilmersdorf district. Conducted by Singer and Taube, the concert featured selections unusual for the venue. Rather than synagogue music, League performers displayed their ties to Jewish and German culture in a presentation of the aria “Vater des Alles,” the funeral chorus from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, the Schubert choral song “Gebet,” and Haydn’s choral “Dankgebet.”18 The season, however, did not of‹cially open until the ‹rst of October. The League’s premiere presentation was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s play Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise, 1779), a parable of religious tolerance inspired in part by Moses Mendelssohn. Before the performance, Singer addressed the audience. When the curtain rises tonight for the ‹rst time in the theatre of the German Jewish [Culture League], you can all be certain that you are to see more than just another play. . . When the curtain falls on the ‹nal scene, you should take

22

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany home with you the image of the isolated, God-loving Jew [Nathan]. We ‹nd ourselves isolated and as such a community have become a more thankful, a more hopeful, and a more uni‹ed God-loving people—we Jews in Germany, we German Jews.19

The ambiguity of Singer’s ‹nal phrase, “we Jews in Germany, we German Jews,” is quite telling and points to what would become a signi‹cant source of contention. The Nazis in charge would later insist that there are only Germans and Jews, not German Jews. Still, League leaders continued to value Moses Mendelssohn and his example of Jewish assimilation. By performing Lessing’s play, League leaders, at this early stage, made their position clear: despite Nazi restriction, the lessons of Lessing’s play would have meaning for their work. The curtain opened hesitantly that ‹rst night—“a bad omen.”20 But the performance was a great success. The former League dancer and actress Ruth Anselm-Herzog, who sat shaking with anticipation before the premiere, recalls the excitement surrounding the event. For her, it symbolized a continuation of German Jewish life in Germany; it would take more than Hitler to end life as she knew it.21 As a statement of de‹ance, in her mind, Anselm-Herzog was not surprised to hear a man whisper to his wife during intermission, “Now I know why Lessing was killed.”22 Anneliese Landau, also in attendance, was struck by the sudden change of context rather than the play itself: “Looking around while waiting [for] the curtain to go up, I found the same audience I had seen at plays and concerts throughout the years[.] [T]hey all had been Jews? It had been of no interest before[,] now it suddenly was!”23 For these early League witnesses, the League’s ‹rst of‹cial event was without precedent. It was also the last time Lessing’s play would appear during the Third Reich. With such a start, the League was sure to attract attention. And indeed it did. League events were generally popular, recalls Kurt Michaelis, an oboist in the Berlin Culture League’s orchestra.24 Though the violinist Henry Meyer joined the Berlin League Orchestra later, he likewise remembers League performances as festive and exciting.25 This special mood pervaded the premiere of the League’s opera division, six weeks after the presentation of Lessing’s play. The performance of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro took place on November 14 at the Berliner Theater on Charlottenstrasse. Singer directed the stage action while Rosenstock conducted the sold-out event. In attendance was a reporter from the New York Times, Herbert F. Peyser. Peyser described the event in an article of 10 December. To pass the mandatory inspection at the

Why the League?

23

door, he explained he was with a New York newspaper and pointed to his American ›ag pin in lieu of a member’s identi‹cation badge. Once in the theater, he settled into his seat and waited for the opera to begin. In his report, he recorded his impressions of the performance: “Not only was the team-work excellent throughout, but the musical standards of the performance were high and some of the singing compared favorably with the best I have heard in German opera houses. For one thing, I cannot recall how long it is since I last listened to so much faultless intonation in the course of a single evening.” But he was also impressed with the circumstances of the performance and general atmosphere. The spirit of the performance found its counterpart in the demeanor of the audience. There was true cordiality, and scarcely an aria went unrewarded with applause. Yet something in the manner and in the tranquil dignity with which that gathering listened to the unfoldment of Mozart’s divine comedy presently became inexplicably but incredibly affecting—something of a spirit that somehow called to mind a congregation of early Christians at worship in the catacombs. And when the opera ended and one emerged on the street, the sight of the crooked cross and the thud of the Storm Troopers’ boots seemed more than ever odious.26

As Peyser clearly saw, the League was an eye in a growing storm. Silvia Tennenbaum, Hans Wilhelm Steinberg’s stepdaughter, explains that “the Nazis were present in the lives of the Jews no matter how well situated they were . . . like this dark cloud.”27 Even at League events there were always a few members of the Gestapo in attendance, making sure rules were followed. But generally this was forgotten during performances. Meyer recalls, “perhaps once in a while, your mind would go back to what just happened there and what will happen tomorrow, but it really didn’t . . . disturb very much.”28 League events represented one of the few opportunities for audience members and performers to shut out the growing hostility surrounding them and “›ee . . . into the light of the stage and into the illusion of music.”29 Singer was careful to protect the League from the dangers outside by banning his artists and staff from engaging in political discussions while at work.30 In the ‹rst monthly newsletter, he also urged audiences to avoid such talk. While members could hardly ignore politics and the escalating effects of Nazi rule, Singer in some ways hoped that by maintaining in the League at least the appearance of political passivity and obedience, the League could remain in fa-

24

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

vor and even expand. Indeed, the creation of the Jewish Culture League in Berlin was soon followed by the formation of two additional active League chapters in Cologne and Frankfurt. While the original Berlin League maintained a theater ensemble, opera, and philharmonic orchestra, the branch in Cologne operated only an independent theater ensemble. The Frankfurt League, with no opera or theater ensemble, focused on orchestral music and maintained its own philharmonic orchestra, under the direction of Steinberg until he took over in Berlin in 1936. These additional League branches were based on independent Jewish cultural activity inspired by the example of Kurt Singer and the Berlin League. Steinberg had been the general music director at Frankfurt’s opera house, where he had made his name conducting new works by Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Kurt Weill. After Hitler’s ascent, Steinberg’s past success did not protect him from dismissal. He had heard of Singer’s founding of the Berlin League and, with this model in mind, worked to organize concerts with Jewish musicians in conjunction with Frankfurt’s local synagogues and other Jewish community leaders. This activity provided the basis for the of‹cial establishment of the Culture League of German Jews Rhine-Main (Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, Bezirk Rhein-Main) on 17 April 1934, a League offshoot that included the whole Rhine-Main district but was centered in Frankfurt under the artistic leadership of Julius Prüwer.31 The League branch in Cologne, encompassing the Rhine-Ruhr area, began much like the League in Frankfurt. Originally called the Friends of Theater and Music, Inc. (Freunde des Theaters und der Musik, e.V.), the Jewish Culture League Rhine-Ruhr (Jüdischer Kulturbund Rhein-Ruhr) was founded in autumn 1933, with Berlin again as the model. Paul Moses was the ‹rst chairman of this League in Cologne, which, along with its focus on theater, organized chamber music concerts, such as piano and vocal recitals.32 Smaller offshoots of the Berlin League also formed in Hamburg, Munich, Mannheim, Breslau, Kassel, Stuttgart, and other locations. The most active League branches were in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Hamburg, which maintained a third independent Jewish theater ensemble.33 The Berlin chapter, supervised by Kurt Singer, was the largest. By 1935, the Jewish Culture League had forty-six local chapters in other towns and cities, which the Nazi regime put under the umbrella union, Reich Association of Jewish Culture Leagues (Reichsverband der jüdischen Kulturbünde), also in Berlin. Singer had already envisioned such an organization by the end of 1933 to coordinate Jewish musical activity in all of Germany.34 From 1935 until the sus-

Why the League?

25

pension of independent League performances outside Berlin in 1939, the central agency in Berlin bore the main responsibility for the repertoire and clearance of programs for all League branches.35 Much of this responsibility fell on Singer, who was in charge of setting musical programs after discussion with individual department directors and concert approval in committee.36 There was of course variance among League branches, especially in the case of the organization in Munich. This branch, unlike other offshoots, supported its own marionette theater from 1935 through 1937.37 But the centralized control of repertoire did give Jewish musical performances across the Reich a certain degree of consistency. Repertoire regularity was also the result of inevitable music exchange. Before and after 1935, many of the smaller League offshoots, as well as the Leagues in Hamburg and Cologne, relied on performances by the League orchestras in Berlin and Frankfurt to supplement their repertoire. In 1934, for example, the Hamburg League celebrated its opening with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, and Schubert’s Seventh Symphony, performed by the Berlin League orchestra, under the direction of Rosenstock.38 As the ‹rst League chapter, the largest and most long-lasting site of League activity, as well as the center of musical debates and negotiations with Nazi leaders, the Berlin association is the most logical site for an exploration of the League and its creation: Why did the League exist? Why did Nazi of‹cials and distinguished Jews support the founding of this Jewish organization? The Jewish Culture League represents a peculiar instance of cooperation between the Nazi regime and Germany’s Jews. It also served a socially and economically diverse Jewish population. Consequently, there were many reasons for its existence—reasons that evolved over time. For its German Jewish founders, the creation of the League initially grew from the exclusion of Jews from Germany’s culture after the April Civil Service Laws. Former League members describe the shock they experienced when they were dismissed from their former posts. After the initial hurt and disappointment, emigration, in hindsight, seems to us the most logical next step. But it was not so simple. Martin Gumpert recalls, “[Emigration] was a very dif‹cult decision. I felt like I was tearing out my own heart. I loved Berlin, I loved Germany, I loved Europe.”39 Jews who wanted to leave Germany for the unknown also had to have enough money, often a sponsor in the country of destination (an af‹davit of support in the case of the United States), and even a clean bill of health. A former performer with the Frankfurt League, Martha Sommer Hirsch, recalls, “You had to be examined by a physician at the consulate. And this physician was a Nazi I swear. And he made it so hard for my mother[,] claimed she had a lung prob-

26

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

lem and she can’t come to the United States and this kind of nonsense . . . [soon] it was just too late.”40 But even with the right contacts and physical constitution, former members needed to visit various Nazi of‹ces—a combination of bureaucracy and harassment—in order to gather the proper travel papers (the tax clearance certi‹cate and exit permit). Then they waited for their “number” to come up. There were quotas, for instance, on immigration into the United States that delayed travel and even prevented emigration. One infamous example is the sailing of the St. Louis with 936 Jewish refugees. They were denied entrance to Cuba and then the United States. The ship eventually returned to Europe.41 League leaders in Berlin hoped to offer artists in this state of limbo a means of income and a chance to continue practicing their artistic craft, at least until Nazism was suppressed. That aim was emphasized in the League’s statement of purpose and invitation to Jewish communities—the primary document in the League’s founding. It was also highlighted in the ‹rst paragraph of the ›edgling organization’s statutes: “The aim of the Culture League is to look after the artistic and scienti‹c interests of the Jewish population and to encourage the creation of jobs for Jewish artists and scientists.”42 But there was also a symbolic function. We were later accused of only founding the Culture League to give bread and work to a few Jewish artists; that is only half right. Naturally we were anxious to enable the hundreds of Jewish artists who had been dismissed without notice to have a modest income until their emigration. However it was much more important to us at that time to offer a home as long as it was still possible to the Jewish public in Germany, which had stood at the forefront of German cultural life.43

Soon after the founding of the League, the organization would also take on the goal of group integration and Jewish renewal.44 This goal would grow more pronounced during the early years of the League’s tenure, as we will see in chapter 2. However, at the very start, League founders simply set out to make life more bearable with the goals of refuge and work. Hinkel and his Nazi associates, however, had their own agenda in agreeing to form the organization. This agenda at ‹rst appears contradictory in light of the April Civil Service Laws, a measure in part designed to eliminate the Jewish presence in Germany’s cultural life. Why would regime leaders pass this law and, shortly thereafter, support the creation of the Culture League and thus the continuation of what they sought to suppress? The establishment of a Jewish League—notably the

Why the League?

27

regime’s ‹rst organizational act in the area of music (even preceding the establishment of the Reich Chamber of Culture)—challenges scholars today as much as it did observers in 1933.45 Herbert Peyser, the New York Times reporter, found the privileging of Jews within the League “a paradoxical reversal of the usual Nazi process.” In his League report, Peyser wrote, “For once, racial ‘impurity’ becomes a sort of asset.”46 Others found the government’s support of the Jewish organization so implausible, they insisted Singer had tricked Hinkel. Baumann recalls an anecdote that circulated at the time. We have already mentioned that Dr. Singer was a well known neurologist, who naturally mastered the art of hypnosis. The story was that in critical moments, Dr. Singer probably hypnotized Mr. Hinkel in order to enforce our side’s claims. That [is] of course nonsense; however, the later seemingly smooth cooperation of both men did not allow this rumor to die down.47

Is there a less fantastical explanation for the regime’s support of the League or the bizarre cooperation between Hinkel and Singer? The ethnic nationalism of the Nazis was clear-cut and deadly enough in one way. Yet, there was also plenty of incoherence within Nazi policy, and it often seems impossible to make sense of the “ragbag” of ideas that, in the place of a clear political program, drove the regime and its supporters.48 Though this limits some examinations of the period, it does not limit this one. There are several explanations consistent with the regime’s contested cultural ideology that account for the Nazi government’s sponsorship of the Berlin Jewish Culture League and its subsequent branches. First, the League was useful for the regime’s campaign of international propaganda. By pointing to their support of the League, Nazi leaders could claim that Jews were not oppressed but encouraged to ‹nd their own forum for cultural expression.49 We can see this exploitation in newspaper articles and broadcasts from the period that point to the League as “showcase.” Through it, the world was to see how much freedom Jews had in Nazi Germany.50 As Hinkel bragged in a broadcast speech of 1935, the League had 25,000 members in Berlin, and probably 100,000 in the whole of Germany. These facts were to counter negative press abroad, and, as Hinkel himself explained, “refute the slanderous rumours circulating abroad and alleging barbarous treatment of the Jews in Germany.”51 This exploitation was unique within programs of musical propaganda from 1933 through 1941. For one, it was not denunciatory. While the performance of

28

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Schoenberg’s music in the League served to send a positive message abroad, the same presentation in the 1938 Exhibition of Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) was meant to demean and denounce the composer at home. This display, part of the ‹rst Reich’s Music Days in Düsseldorf, was organized by Hans Severus Ziegler, one of the most active early members of the Combat League for German Culture. It presented a diverse group of composers, including Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Ernst Kenek, and Igor Stravinsky, as “diseased, unhealthy, and highly dangerous” in an attempt to reinforce and spread conservative musical tastes present at least since the Weimar era.52 As with the earlier exhibition of Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) of 1937, the German population and its musical leaders were encouraged to attend (though some, protesting the discriminatory censure of art, boycotted the event).53 The League, in contrast, was closed to the general public. In this way, it did have a corollary after 1941 in the concentration camp Terezín. Terezín was originally a garrison town in northern Czechoslovakia, 60 kilometers north of Prague. The Nazis renamed Terezín Theresienstadt in October 1941, when they recon‹gured the town into a way station for distinguished Jews—artists, musicians, World War I veterans, and the elderly—before deportation to Auschwitz or Buchenwald. Though 33,430 died in Terezín from maltreatment, starvation, and disease, its initial use earned the camp such names as Spa Terezín, the Model Jewish Ghetto, and the Reich’s Old Age Home.54 The positive images of the camp, cultivated by the regime, were further cemented by musical performances at Kameradschaftsabende (evenings of fellowships), of‹cially sanctioned by the Nazis in charge on 28 December 1941. These evenings, which included theater, cabaret, chamber music, opera, instrumental performances, and lectures, eventually expanded into a highly organized Freizeitgestaltung or Administration of Free Time Activities.55 The regime exploited such events, like League activity, for propaganda purposes. In May 1943, Nazi leaders invited members of the German press to the camp and encouraged them to attend a concert and witness a prescreened trial as evidence of the autonomous Jewish government and the Jews’ healthy cultural life.56 Toward the end of 1943, they even launched a Stadtsverschoenerung, or city beauti‹cation, for the purpose of continuing to mislead future visitors. The pace of these efforts doubled in the wake of June 1944, when representatives from the International Red Cross were expected to visit.57 When the camp passed the Red Cross’s inspection, regime representatives constructed a documentary ‹lm about the camp, “a ‹lm that would prove to the world that the Jews were being treated far better than they deserved.”58

Why the League?

29

This manipulation of foreign politics was hardly the regime’s only use for the League. The creation of the League functioned as a mechanism of local social control by facilitating tighter policing of cultural activity and later Jewish activity in general. It also represented a means to quell any potential resistance by providing the many recently displaced Jews with a new source of income.59 Although the League could not employ all unemployed Jews, the jobs it did provide offered others hope for future economic stability. This ploy could also appease Jews unemployed in other sectors, in particular those in medicine, law, and business, which regime functionaries targeted with special zeal. Even before the boycott of Jewish stores on 1 April 1933, in Prussia and Bavaria, Nazi leaders prohibited Jewish lawyers from entering court buildings. In Munich on 24 April 1933 the public insurance system no longer included Jewish doctors. The city’s slogan was: “Jews may treat only Jews.”60 Still, the goals of propaganda and social control do not explain the regime’s attention to the League’s repertoire. From the very start, Hinkel and his staff censored League programs. Such musical censorship has been a major means of manipulation wielded in various historical periods by religion and the state. The goals of censorship are cultural protection and, like propaganda, mass behavioral control.61 In Nazi Germany, it was associations with music that inspired its regulation—though somewhat haphazardly. Music associated with Jews, America, and modernity, for example, were targets of censorship within Aryan cultural institutions. But this general policy of censorship was reversed inside the League. This music often banned outside the League was in most cases allowed within it, and vice versa. This is not to say League bans were straightforward: they were ordered by both Hinkel’s of‹ce, which reviewed each program before performance, as well as an internal League “reader” or self-censor in Berlin, who read programs with “National Socialist eyes.”62 In 1935, Baumann assumed this post, which he took very seriously. After all, “mistakes” could result in detention or even internment and possible death at a concentration camp, the ‹rst of which was already opened in 1933, in Dachau.63 Compounding the confusion, neither a list of banned composers nor an explanation of the bans has survived. Nevertheless, pronouncements by Nazis and League of‹cials, preserved programs with certain pieces crossed out, as well as the League’s repertoire clearly re›ect the regime’s desire to prevent performances of German music and the progressive elimination of that repertoire on the League stage. Figure 5, based mainly on the repertoire, maps this gradual constriction. In a speech of 1936, Singer credited the early proscription of works by Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss to “reasons of tact and moderation in

30

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Bruckner Wagner R. Strauss 1933

Beethoven 1936

Bach Brahms Schumann 1937

Handel Mozart Schubert 1938

League Closed 1941

Fig. 5. Composers banned from the League’s programs.

one’s need.”64 In this light, the ban on Wagner’s and Strauss’s music may well have been the work of the internal reader, who recognized the regime’s special valuation of these composers. By 1937, the works of all composers of German origin were of‹cially banned except those by Handel. Chapter 5 will explore Handel’s comparatively late exclusion—in 1938, the year of the annexation of Austria (Anschluss) and, along with it, the music of Austrian composers like Mozart and Schubert. For now, it is important to note the regime’s censorship of music considered German as well as its encouragement of so-called Jewish music. Works by all foreign authors and composers were still generally allowed, but Nazis in charge preferred (and at times required) that the League focus speci‹cally on Jewish music. Discussing Germany’s Jewish life, in 1935, the Manchester Guardian reported, “It is a thorn in the ›esh of the German authorities that the Jews have created among themselves such an atmosphere of purely German culture; they had not expected this result.”65 In this way dismayed by a League performance he had attended as Hinkel’s guest, the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg complained, “These are performances by Jews for Jews but they perform nothing Jewish.”66 To rectify this wrong, in 1936, Hinkel announced that only “authentic Jewish art” was appropriate in the League.67 During a three-day League conference in September 1936 (discussed in the following chapter), regime leaders also insisted that Singer have his artists educated in “Jewishness” and his audiences prepared for the more Jewish repertoire through lectures and brochures.68 Why? Nazi leaders agreed to form the League in order to further their aim of purifying German culture through a clear separation of German and Jewish art, as Hinkel explained in a statement about the League of 1935. We know that time and again Jews work in disguise; we know that some deception is still unsolved. We view changing this situation wherever it still exists, as our most important task. We will hold the guilty accountable, not just the Jews,

Why the League?

31

but all those who want to smuggle their way through the back door. This will come to an end. What we want is pure separation. Just as anonymity is undesirable, so too is Goynymity (“Goi=nonyme”).69

The League was to have a separate identity, one distinct from that of the Goy or non-Jew. This goal of division was behind a wide range of Nazi legislation: the ban on changes of “Jewish names” to “non-Jewish names” of 13 May 1933; a proscription on public displays and sales of Jewish newspapers on 1 October 1935; the removal of street signs with Jewish associations; prohibition of Jewish access to public swimming pools; and order of 17 August 1938 that all Jews add Israel or Sarah to their name by 1 January 1939 if they did not already have an approved Jewish name.70 Such a program of separation helps explain other aspects of the League’s creation and operation as well. The Gestapo accepted the society’s existence only when the “misleading” words Deutscher Juden (German Jews) were eliminated from the League’s original name, making it clear that Jews, whom Hinkel called “persons alien to our kind,”71 could never be German. The main organization representing Jewish interests in Germany, formed on 17 September 1933, succumbed to similar pressure. Originally the National Representation of German Jews (Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden), this association became the National Representation of Jews in Germany (Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland) in 1935. The League’s name was also stripped of the year “1933,” as requested by the founders: the year of the foundation of the “Thousand Year Reich” was not to be confused with the year of the foundation of a Jewish association.72 To perpetuate this verbal demarcation on the stage, in plays performed by the League, Hinkel’s of‹ce censored the word deutsch as well as words considered especially German, such as blond. In one case, Hinkel’s censors replaced the word blonde (blond) with schöne (beautiful), altering a Molnar comedy and the seemingly inoffensive line: “Lebe wohl, du untreue blonde Artenmappe” (Live well, you untrue blond folder).73 However, Nazi of‹cials did not envision simply a concrete physical or symbolic divide between Jews and all that was considered German. In fact, Jews were still able to visit the accepted German population’s cultural organizations. Former Berlin League member Margot Weintraub Sisman, for one, remembers attending the Berlin Staatsoper after 1933. (However, since Nazis regularly attended performances there, she preferred events at the Municipal Opera.) Jews were not forbidden this limited freedom until after Kristallnacht at the end of 1938.74 This proves that for the Nazis in charge, the real crime was not that Jewish audiences heard German music but rather that Jewish musicians played

32

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

German music. This reasoning is consistent with condemnations of conductors, such as Bruno Walter, who Nazi sympathizers believed performed German music in “un-German” ways. It also brings to mind attacks against the legacy of Felix Mendelssohn, who the writer Karl Blessinger, a Nazi Party member by 1932, believed revived Bach’s St. Matthew Passion so that “Judaism could claim the management of German’s greatest creations.”75 In this way, Hinkel’s repertoire regulation was ordered, above all, to curb the perceived Jewish control of German music. This goal was ideological, based on the very worst the term authenticity can imply. Peter Kivy de‹nes authenticity as authoritative, original, genuine, belonging to himself, self-originated—so many ways, in fact, it is almost rendered meaningless.76 Though authenticity is generally regarded as a positive, even moral, ideal,77 the multivalency of the word allows it to be manipulated in such a way that it can provide the justi‹cation for a variety of sins. In creating the League, Nazi leaders unconsciously seized on the idea of the authoritative within authenticity to do just that. This idea implicates issues of power: someone has the authority to validate a particular representation in a historically speci‹c moment, thus privileging one voice as more legitimate than another.78 For Hinkel and his associates, the “German” voice as opposed to the “Jewish” voice was the authentic representation of German art. This thinking had solid roots in Germany’s past, especially the writing of Richard Wagner. Though there was hardly a direct line of thinking from Wagner to Nazism in the application of race to music, Hitler did recognize the composer as his only predecessor.79 In his notorious “Judaism in Music” (1850), which was published in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik under the pseudonym K. Freigedank (free thought), Wagner discussed Jewish composers and their music as inauthentic. The article was meant merely as a commentary on the debate of the time about whether the character of Jewish synagogue music was present in secular Jewish music, such as Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète. It was also to address the question of Jewish music as a genre: did it even exist? But Wagner seized the opportunity to map old anti-Semitic arguments onto the new idea of Jewish music. One offense, he explained, was that the Jews, who have no art of their own, are only capable of imitation, comparing the Jews to parrots who “reel off human words and phrases.”80 To add insult to injury, part of the Jews’ inability to create, according to Wagner, derived from their concept of art as a form of commerce.81 Relying on the long-standing prejudice that the Jews are a nation of usurers, Wagner speci‹cally criticized the work of Meyerbeer, who, he said,

Why the League?

33

treated music as a business by catering to his Parisian audiences with thrilling situations and orchestral effect. Here we see an ironic accord between the Frankfurt School and Wagner, whose objection anticipated Adorno and Horkheimer’s requirement that authentic art be “autonomous” or created outside the culture industry.82 Wagner’s condemnation of Jewish musicians in this vein appears over and over again in works from the Third Reich. This reinforces the declaration “In order to understand what National Socialism is, one must read Wagner”—a sentiment Hitler himself had supported.83 In fact, in his 1939 monograph, Blessinger listed Meyerbeer as “the unscrupulous business Jew” (“skrupellose Geschäftsjude”), echoing Wagner’s own attack on the composer.84 Wagner’s position on this matter was perpetuated by later anti-Semitic authors, such as Julius Langbehn, an important although lesser-known Nazi predecessor. He continued to condemn Jewish involvement in German musical affairs in the aftermath of Germany’s uni‹cation in 1871, when Germany’s nationalistic fervor was at its highest. Many at the time looked at Jews from eastern Europe, with a distinct language, dress, and custom, as an example of the outsider and continued to view with distrust those Jews who moved further and further away from Jewish traditions. Langbehn captured this spirit in his 1890s sensation Rembrandt als Erzieher, which regained its initial popularity in the mid to late 1920s.85 In this publication, Langbehn celebrated Rembrandt’s peasant roots, insisting, as Herder had, that great art could only spring from the unpolluted indigenous soil of the Volk. This foundation was the Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil)86 that the Jews, as a nationless people, could never have. To that end, Langbehn insisted that the Volk must conquer modern culture, which he denounced as the product of Jewish decadence, and in a way “go primitive.”87 Only by doing so could Germany prevent the Jew from “gnawing at German culture, corroding and corrupting the character of the true German.”88 Writers sympathetic to the Nazi cause displayed a similar logic in their condemnation of modern composers, such as Arnold Schoenberg, who they believed was too abstract to represent a national voice. With these arguments of Jewish inauthenticity already in place, Nazi ideologues could further claim that German music, as the pinnacle of European art, could only be corrupted in Jewish hands. Such a position gave these “guardians of culture” the ideological rationale to remove this harmful element from the realm of European high culture. This point is signi‹cant to our understanding of the formation of the League. Nazi leaders justi‹ed the creation of the League, in part, by arguing that when Jews performed German masterworks they degraded and polluted them. In short, Jews could and should only create Jewish music.

34

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Such twisted logic corresponds in striking detail to the thinking behind the contemporary idea of cultural appropriation. This practice, in one example, is the incorporation of musical traits from a minority culture in the composition by a member of the majority culture. In another example, it is the performance by a member of the majority culture of a musical piece from a minority culture. The results of such borrowings are said to be the degradation of the minority’s cultural good or tradition.89 With this mind-set, there are those misguided few who rail against a white person’s performance of the blues in part to protect the art form from contamination. In “Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues” (1994), Joel Rudinow confronts this issue, citing a statement by the late jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason as his starting point: “The blues is black man’s music, and whites diminish it at best or steal it at worst. In any case they have no moral right to use it.”90 Though the Jews were neither a majority culture nor a clearly de‹ned cultural group, Nazi of‹cials treated them as such and similarly denounced the effects of their appropriation of socalled German music. To illustrate, Hans Hinkel viewed Jews as a controlling force in Germany’s cultural realm. He appealed to his racial comrades to remember “to what an unbelievable degree contemporary German theater was in‹ltrated by Jews” in order to understand why the Nazis were forced to eliminate them from their posts.91 Hinkel, like Wagner before him, treated the Jews in this case as the majority, a dominating presence in Germany. In “Judaism in Music,” Wagner wrote, “According to the present constitution of this world, the Jew in truth is already more than emancipate: he rules and will rule, so long as money remains the power before which all our doings and our dealings lose their force.”92 This thinking was dependent on the idea that culture, an intangible enterprise, is a property that can be possessed by a nation. Nazi ideologues claimed German music in this way: “Those holding responsibility in this Jewish organization [the Kulturbund] may now show what they can do for their racial comrades. We shall not disturb them if they do not meddle in our German cultural life. . . . Germany and its great cultural possessions belong to the Germans.”93 Reclaiming Germany’s cultural goods was necessary in order to avoid the consequences of this imagined Jewish appropriation. During the Reichsmusikfestwoche of 1938, Goebbels, whose Ministry of Propaganda took over the running of the League when Hinkel was hired, described these effects as follows. We can hardly even imagine that it was once reality that in Germany, the classic land of music, it was possible that our own great masters were deformed and

Why the League?

35

derided through distorted performances, that the area of German folk music was ruled almost exclusively by Jewish elements, that the German folk song experienced a shocking trivialization, that the most tedious atonality celebrated wild and provocative orgies, that our German classics were kitschi‹ed and jazzi‹ed.94

For staunch Nazis, the regime’s ideology, which underlay anti-Jewish measures such as the April Laws and the regulation of League repertoire, therefore signi‹ed a positive turn. These measures would protect “German music” as a precious national resource and ensure its authenticity by returning it to the Volk, its rightful owners. Hans Hinkel summarized this ideological outlook when he confronted the question “Why the League?” If asked why we carried out all these dejewi‹cation measures and sent the Jews, who had been segregated from German cultural life, into their own Jewish organization, we can answer in a few words—leaving aside the basic foundations of National Socialism in the question of race: We wanted to give the German people back their native rights to such a decisive area of cultural life and not allow those of foreign essence to determine their spiritual and artistic life. Today, the National Socialist State, as the organized will of our people, is in possession of all sovereign rights in the cultural life.95

The importance of this goal within Nazi policy should not be underestimated. Even within certain ghettos and concentration camps, regime leaders continued to regulate musical activity along these ideological lines, outlawing works by Aryan composers.96 In the Warsaw Ghetto, the orchestra could perform music only by Jewish composers after April 1942.97 Though censorship was hardly rigorous, in Terezín, Nazi authorities similarly censored musical events and encouraged Jewish music.98 In 1944, a Nazi commandant ordered the prisoner Hanus Thein, a former stage director, to produce The Tales of Hoffmann, by the Jewish composer Offenbach.99 The musical score of the documentary ‹lm of Terezín, completed on 28 March 1945, also incorporated music solely by Jewish composers, including Mendelssohn, Max Bruch, Jacques Offenbach, as well as the inmates Hans Krasa and Pavel Haas. Highlights included a performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah at the beginning of the documentary by a choir directed by Karel Fischer and, for scene seventeen, a presentation of the ‹nale of the children’s opera Brundibar, by Krasa, a work performed over ‹fty

36

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

times in the prison.100 The value of this ‹lm for the regime was in this way not just in its positive portrayal of the camp for the outside world but also in its successful separation of Jews from German music. This separation, in the League and certain concentration camps, was the ful‹llment of a perceived ethical obligation—even a moral imperative. This conclusion might seem surprising. However, as Claudia Koonz argues, “‘The Nazi Conscience’ is not an oxymoron”; Nazis consistently listened to “that inner voice that admonishes ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not.’”101 Indeed, Nazi leaders believed they had a moral duty to protect German culture by ending Jewish musicians’ appropriation of German music. With this rationale, the regime was able to justify the removal of Jews from Germany’s cultural life as a preliminary step toward their removal from Germany as a whole. As Koonz rightly concludes, not all moral objectives preclude evil.102 But could the League live up to expectations? Here was a heterogeneous community without a clear sense of Jewish identity forced, for the most part, to relinquish ties to German culture and confront the idea of Jewish music and the problems therein. How did they respond? What music would League leaders program, and how would members react? And ‹nally, how would all of this change over time, during the League’s tenure from 1933 through 1941?

chapter two

What Is Jewish Music? The League and the Dilemmas of Musical Identity

masha benya, a singer with a hebrew and yiddish background, thought she would be a natural ‹t for the newly formed Jewish Culture League. She became an opera singer with the organization in 1937 and occasionally appeared with Anneliese Landau. However, earlier, she had approached one of the League’s leading men and explained that she wanted to sing Yiddish and Hebrew songs. She remembers his response: “No one is interested in this type of music, no one can understand it.”1 Many League organizers did not consider Hebrew and Yiddish folk music high culture. Why would they? Most had never considered themselves Jewish and, despite Nazi decree, remained German. In My German Question, Peter Gay explains this German psychology. For my parents and for me, cherishing our Jewishness was not an acceptable option. We did not want to be Jews by Nazi edict; their de‹nition of our “race” was just another lie that we repudiated as unhistorical and unscienti‹c. We did not think of ourselves as members of a chosen people, divinely selected for glory or for suffering. Whatever our pious fellow-pariahs might say, we could not make ourselves believe what we did not believe.2

Two in›uential League principals shared a similar German mind-set. Anneliese Landau grew up in a liberal household and was not required to attend synagogue. She eventually wrote her dissertation on German Lieder. Though the son of a rabbi, Kurt Singer was an expert on Wagner and German folk song. According to his daughter Margot Wachsman, he was “more German than the Germans.”3 Yiddish folk song had no connection to the great Germanic musical traditions these League leaders valued above all and, perhaps more important, knew. 37

38

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

In the League’s ‹rst year, League organizers thus set out to maintain a German sensibility within their Jewish organization and remain true to their own strong connections to German culture, as League of‹cial Julius Bab explained in November 1933. What we German Jews seek and ‹nd in this cultural movement is maintenance and care of that two-fold root of life from which our being has grown up to this point. If we are ready even now, as people of Jewish tradition and German culture, to take all the consequences of the isolation and self-suf‹ciency imposed on us by Germany’s political situation, we do not want to create an illusory nothing for ourselves—but Jewish culture, a ghetto culture, within these limitations. We want to remain in active connection with the great cultural goods of Germany and the world.4

As Baumann had feared, the League for many signi‹ed a shocking return to the ghetto. But Bab and others, such as Hans Samter, who wrote for the Germanoriented Der Schild, saw German culture as the means of opposition to forced ghettoization.5 Other League branch leaders agreed. In an early communication from the League in Cologne, Paul Moses wrote, “We have no wish to restrict our activities to Jewish art.”6 Taking this de‹ance even further, the director in Cologne, Gerhard Walter-Rosenbaum, declared in the summer of 1934 that an important task of the League was “to maintain and strengthen links with German culture.”7 In the beginning, this all-important German connection was well represented in the League’s musical programs (as we will discuss in chapter 4). This connection and loyalty to Germany was especially clear in the League’s performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, under the direction of Michael Taube, in August 1934 to honor the recently deceased Reich president Hindenburg.8 But this hardly suited German Zionists. They sought to promote a Jewish awareness during the Third Reich—a mission that grew out of an awakening national consciousness that was, for many, a response to anti-Semitism. Rather than being forced to suffer as a Jew, many turned to Zionism and voluntarily identi‹ed as a Jew, turning a point of shame into a point of honor.9 As Robert Weltsch (1891–1982) wrote to great effect in the Jüdische Rundschau of 4 April 1933, “Wear the Yellow Patch with Pride.”10 In this vein, Hannah Arendt wrote, “You know the only group I ever belonged to were the Zionists. This was only because of Hitler of course.”11 Thus Zionism and its promise of a Jewish nation came to represent a means of resistance and source of solace.

What Is Jewish Music?

39

Jewish culture and music were a part of this growing national spirit, especially for German Cultural Zionists, who emphasized cultural expression as a fundamental source of Jewish nationalism.12 In their thinking, what was a nation without a national music? Voicing this view in 1935, the League press coordinator Friedrich Brodnitz explained, “One must be clear however that all material work to support a community in a historic sense must remain meaningless if it doesn’t succeed in maintaining this community as the carrier of its own cultural forms.”13 Even within Political Zionism, this promotion of Jewish culture was desirable as a means of facilitating social bonding among Jews at the preemigration level in order to alleviate the homesickness Herzl foresaw in the new state.14 However, this goal, with an eye toward Palestine, was of secondary importance within German Zionism as a whole. Inner freedom— through Jewish renewal and self-awareness—was the focus in the 1930s before outer freedom. Such a stance was more appealing generally; the idea of a Jewish national home was of no interest to the vast majority of German Jews at the time.15 The League, as a Jewish organization, was the perfect platform to advance this Zionist agenda. However, with the League’s early commitment to German culture, German Zionists were understandably critical of the League, its leaders, and its initial orientation. The Jüdische Rundschau, the of‹cial organ of Germany’s Zionist Association,16 vented the Zionists’ frustrations on 25 July 1933, even before the League’s of‹cial premiere. But it seems that a certain dif‹culty has already emerged at this early stage. The heads of the Culture League give appeasing assurances to all sides but this merely demonstrates that discussion of the Jewish question among Jews has not advanced beyond ‹rst steps. One is forced to ask what is in fact “Jewish” about the events held by the Culture League.17

This early criticism of the League’s national program was consistent with Zionist dissatisfaction throughout 1933 to 1935, before the Zionist cause had gained prominent representation within the League. Despite very different motivations, it also paralleled Nazi leaders’ own mounting displeasure with League offerings (discussed in chapter 1). This overlap was not the only link between Nazi and Zionist activities in the Third Reich. Nazi and German Zionist ideology shared tenets of German völkisch and racialist thinking that con›ated race and nation.18 With this basis, they both viewed the peoples of the world as separate, including Germans and

40

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Jews—as a national, racial, and religious people—and took a ‹rm stance against assimilationist efforts.19 The Zionist goal of establishing a separate state in Palestine—Eretz Israel—also served Nazi purposes to an extent. The regime generally wanted Jews out of Germany, and resettlement was a clear means to rid themselves of their Jewish problem. Alfred Rosenberg concluded in an article of 1920, “Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a signi‹cant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destination.”20 In June 1932, three hundred Nazis marched through Breslau echoing Rosenberg’s position in more menacing tones: “Let the Jews go to Palestine.”21 To this end, regime of‹cials established concrete economic measures to facilitate emigration to Palestine in the transfer agreement, which also bene‹ted the regime economically by opening up new international markets and preventing additional international boycotts.22 This support, however, had its ideological limitations. The Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, on the whole, did not believe Jews had the racial strength of character to support a separate nation. Those that subscribed to the Jewish conspiracy theory also ultimately distrusted Zionist aims. This theory found a place in Nazi thinking thanks in large part to Rosenberg, who came to Munich from Estonia in 1919. With him, he brought his understanding of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which appeared in Russia in 1905 and is credited to Sergei Nilus, an extremist in the Russian Orthodox Church. His pamphlet masqueraded as a record of a secret meeting between Jewish leaders in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress in Basel. There, leaders such as Herzl planned through war the destruction of the non-Jewish world, according to the publication.23 In 1919, the ‹rst German translation of the pamphlet appeared, providing the basis for doubts about Zionism in the Nazi Party. It also encouraged the idea, upheld by Rosenberg in his 1922 Der Staatsfeindliche Zionismus, that the Jewish conspiracy was behind Germany’s defeat during World War I.24 In this light, the Nazi support of Zionism can be understood as the lesser of two perceived evils. Though many in the party viewed a separate state as dangerous, they also welcomed a Germany without the “polluting” in›uence of Jews. And so the regime supported emigration to Palestine while also encouraging Zionism in more subtle ways at home. In 1936, Hinkel even sanctioned resolutions that were Zionist in character, such as his suggestion that the League adopt the Hebrew language as the medium for its cultural activities. This initiative adhered to the Nazi Party’s twenty-‹ve-point program of February 1920: “Non-German newspapers may be published only with the state’s consent and shall not be printed in German.”25 Thus, in both ideological and

What Is Jewish Music?

41

practical terms, the Zionist movement bene‹ted from the rise of National Socialism. In fact, up to 1933, the Zionist movement had had only a small following in Germany predominantly composed of eastern European Jews. Many German Jews joined the movement only after Hitler reminded them of their common Jewish identity.26 Despite this evidence of cooperation, however, there were inevitably certain distinctions in the Nazi and Zionist promotions of Jewish culture in the League. One difference is clear in the Zionists’ critique of the League following its theatrical premiere on 1 October 1933. Most Zionists criticized this performance of Lessing’s Nathan the Wise as a show of support for assimilation rather than a distinct Jewish identity.27 With this in mind, an article in the Jüdische Rundschau insisted that League organizers lacked direction and must elucidate their “spiritual foundations.”28 The article, however, did not demand that the League include only “Jewish works.” The article explained, “The Culture League, even though it is comprised of German Jews and works in the German language, cannot and is not allowed to claim to make ‘German culture.’ But what is ‘Jewish culture’ in today’s Germany?”29 Zionists called for a repertoire that af‹rmed a Jewish identity—one that was connected to the interests of Jewish people and paid homage to Jewish cultural activities in Palestine. And yet, the idea of Jewish culture in Germany was highly problematic for Zionists. This dilemma had been evident three decades earlier at the Fifth Zionist Congress. On 27 December 1901, the second day of the Congress, Martin Buber promoted Jewish cultural interests in his speech. However, he maintained that current Zionist music, visual art, and poetics were only “seedlings of Jewish culture.” He envisioned true Jewish art and Jewish culture only in Eretz Israel.30 The rationale for this conclusion is clari‹ed in Kurt Freyer’s discussion of “Jewish art,” which was published in Berlin in 1929 in the Jüdisches Lexicon (Jewish Encyclopedia). Freyer, a specialist on Spinoza, concluded that one can speak of “art by Jews” and “art for Jews” but not of a distinct “Jewish art.” He wrote, “Art by and for Jews lacks a well-de‹ned, speci‹cally Jewish characteristic, since [it] always employs the forms and motifs of the contemporary host-societies in whose midst the Jews have lived.”31 According to this logic, Jewish artists, without a common land, assumed the national features of their separate host-societies. Thus, Freyer insisted, Jewish artists helped create French, German, or Spanish art, for example, but not Jewish art. In this way, land, as a de‹ning national feature, appeared as a stumbling block in discussions of Jewish art. This formed the basis for the Zionists’ call for a common land from which to create national art—a call that resulted in undertakings such as the founding of the

42

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Palestine in 1906.32 Still present in Zionist communities in Nazi Germany, this outlook was responsible for many Zionists’ quest to encourage a repertoire connected to Jewishness rather than a Jewish repertoire. This ideological distinction was also evident in the Jüdische Rundschau’s review of the League’s ‹rst opera, The Marriage of Figaro, which was less critical of the League and in fact almost conciliatory. The article clearly recognized that Mozart’s opera, performed on 14 November 1933, “is neither Jewish nor does it have the slightest bit to do with Jewishness.”33 This conclusion undermined Ludwig Misch’s attempt to ‹nd something Jewish in the work. In the Israelitisches Familienblatt, the only large Jewish newspaper unaf‹liated with a political institution or organization,34 Misch, a composer and music critic, reminded readers that the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte came from a Jewish family and the German translation of the original Italian text was completed by the German Jewish conductor Hermann Levi.35 Avoiding such extramusical associations, the Rundschau excused the League for choosing the work: “There is still no ‘Jewish’ opera today.”36 Again the Zionist platform—that there was no authentic Jewish music outside Palestine—in›uenced the review’s pronouncements. This left room for Mozart’s opera, a “master work of amusement,” which, according to the article, provided the absolute contrast to the Jewish fate.37 This position challenged regime leaders’ more open-ended delineation of Jewish music based on the subject matter of the work or supposed race of the composer. Such criteria had played a role around the turn of the century within German Cultural Zionism but had generally fallen out of favor by World War I.38 Although Nazi of‹cials did privilege certain Jewish composers as more authentic (as we will see in chapter 3), an opera by a Jew, such as Meyerbeer, was technically a Jewish opera in their eyes and therefore appropriate for a League performance. In the organization’s ‹rst season, however, the League as a whole was not yet ready to join this discussion. Singer was working to make the League appealing to a diverse population, which included many with no interest in the question of Jewish culture. In a speech toward the end of 1933, Singer assessed the League’s contribution so far and took the opportunity to combat criticism and garner support for his ›edgling organization. “Those who desire a stronger emphasis of the Jewish aspect in the work of the Jewish Culture League,” he proclaimed, “may rest assured that the leaders of the Jewish Culture League have constantly before their eyes the ideal of a strongly-Jewish German theatre. They must not, however, press and demand which it is impossible to ful‹ll, for

What Is Jewish Music?

43

an abrupt cultural break and transformation.”39 While pleading for patience, Singer did everything in his power to begin gradually including works of Jewish interest in order to meet both Zionist and Nazi expectations. This effort grew more signi‹cant by 1935, when the Zionist platform of “a positive Jewish awareness,” supported from outside by Hinkel and his associates, became a common position in Jewish communities.40 Within the League, however, Singer’s attempts to appeal to the Zionists and Nazi authorities did not go unchallenged. In fact, con›ict became so much a part of the League’s internal operation that an arbitration committee was established by 1938 to facilitate negotiations among League administrators, as Werner Levie explains. Do not differences of opinion and disputes arise easily here? Of course. Differences are unavoidable where so many temperaments and opinions collide, where so many people with different goals and intentions work. We have therefore, with of‹cial approval, set up an arbitration committee, which will settle disputes under the chairmanship of attorney Dr. Hermann Eisner and, wherever possible, negotiate a successful reconciliation.41

This step would have been useful upon the League’s conception given the internal con›ict. In a much-criticized interview in Der Schild, Julius Bab explained that in the League he wanted “to create as a German” and implied that the resignation of the Zionist participants was inevitable. After this interview, Singer prohibited all unauthorized public pronouncements about the aims of the League’s cultural work.42 Bab’s position was insupportable given the political realities of the League’s operation in Nazi Germany. It was, nevertheless, also shared by the League’s audiences. In a memorandum sent to the League’s administrative advisers, dated 14 June 1935, Singer described the challenge the public posed to the League’s repertoire selection: “This AUDIENCE is the ‹rst problem. This audience wants to see what it considers agreeable and important, even in the Culture League Theater; it does not want to be taken aback by experiments; it does not want to be confused, neither in taste nor in feeling. . . . Our audience is resistant to the unfamiliar.”43 Therein lay the challenge. For most, music produced by composers striving to capture a Jewish national essence was just that. Kurt Sommerfeld, a member of the League’s orchestra from September 1933 to September 1936, recalls, “The thing that was new for me in the Culture League was Jewish music, for example ‘Jüdische Tanz’ by Karol Rathaus. For me, that was a new world

44

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

. . .”44 By way of explanation, he states, “I come from a family that was traditionally German”45—a claim many former performers and members of the League could have made. For this reason and according to hundreds of letters he received, Singer concluded in 1935 that League audiences preferred music that was “classical, entertaining, light.”46 Still, in his memorandum of 14 June 1935, Singer insisted that, despite the public’s indifference, the League would continue to be devoted to classic artwork, as well as Jewish art. This proclaimed, and in many ways forced, dedication to Jewish culture was symbolically represented by the League’s name change from Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (Culture League of German Jews) to Jüdischer Kulturbund, Berlin (Jewish Culture League, Berlin). The new designation was in keeping with the regime’s evolving policies on the Jewish question, speci‹cally the Nuremberg Laws of 15 September 1935. To isolate the Jew as outsider, the third law, the Law for the Defense of German Blood and Honor, outlawed marriage between Jews and non-Jews.47 The second law stripped Jews of German citizenship. The League was now of‹cially a foreign enterprise. Although it was not legally changed until the beginning of June 1935, the League’s new name was announced in the May edition of the organization’s monthly publication, the Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin Monatsblätter (formerly Kulturbund Deutscher Juden Monatsblätter). There it was explained that the change had been decided “unanimously” by the Jewish representatives at a meeting on 26 April in the Berlin Theater. The fact is, however, that the League had opposed the proposed name change for quite some time. In a letter of 18 May 1934 to the Charlottenburg court, Singer insisted that the word German was essential to the League’s designation. The organization was after all “a Culture League for Jews who speak German and live in Germany.”48 He continued, “The word German here therefore has a real essential signi‹cance, since it is necessary for a clear description of the society’s content.”49 In its response, dated 24 May 1934, the Charlottenburg court refused to alter its standpoint. It explained, “The name component ‘German Jew’ is misleading and therefore not able to be registered. There are only Jews per se. There are however neither German Jews nor French Jews, nor Polish Jews, etc.”50 Despite Singer’s public declaration, the League continued to ‹ght the decision until they were eventually required to assume the new designation. According to Herbert Freeden, the change was only approved at the 26 April assembly “to maintain the appearance of justice.”51 On the following day, still in the Berlin Theater, a two-day symposium of the newly relabeled Jewish Culture League and its various branches in Germany

What Is Jewish Music?

45

began. There, on 27 April 1935, with Hans Hinkel and other Nazi of‹cials in attendance, thirty-six regional and local branches of the Jewish Culture League approved the creation of the Reichsverband der Jüdischen Kulturbünde (Association of Jewish Culture Leagues). This central organization in Berlin, under the leadership of Kurt Singer, was supposed to facilitate cooperation between the various League branches and allow individual members, for a small addition to their monthly dues, to attend the events of other local and regional centers. It also presented Hinkel and the other Nazi of‹cials in attendance with the possibility of exerting greater in›uence and tighter control over League activities. This reorganization was no doubt accepted by League representatives under Nazi pressure; in fact, Hinkel himself argued for the creation of the central organization at the event—listing the advantages of such an umbrella organization—and left the proceedings only after the initiative was approved.52 The Jüdische Rundschau was quick to point out that the newly formed organization lacked representation from Zionist communities—“the circles which had a connection to actual Jewish cultural work.”53 This also concerned Hinkel’s of‹ce and the Gestapo, an especially strong supporter of Zionism in Germany. An SS position paper of June 1934 argued for the promotion of Jewish emigration and voiced a concern that the strongly assimilationist Jews of Germany would never leave the country. As a countermeasure, the paper proposed active encouragement of Jewish organizations designed to foster a sense of Jewishness and Jewish identity.54 To this end, Zionist involvement was a special necessity. The Gestapo’s leader Reinhard Heydrich worked toward this aim within the League. On 13 August 1935, he issued the following order. I make it a special duty for the State Police to watch out that assimilatory efforts in the local Culture Leagues are suppressed. If these efforts appear, they should be reported to me. It is to be diligently noted that the management of the local Culture Leagues is drawn from Zionist or, as the case may be, State Zionist circles.55

Once again, we see how parallel the Nazi and Zionist interests were during the early years of the Third Reich—a paradox that would not have surprised Herzl, who recognized that “it is anti-Semites who will be our staunchest friends, and the anti-Semitic countries which will be our allies.”56 And yet, the perceived Zionist and Nazi tie within the League was far more complex than it may at ‹rst appear—as illustrated by the controversial Kareski promotion and its aftermath.

46

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

In December 1935, the Nazis, not the Zionists, attempted to rectify the Rundschau’s perceived wrong with the appointment of Georg Kareski as head of the central Association of Jewish Culture Leagues, in place of Singer, who would remain on the board and be in charge of artistic performances.57 Hinkel explained the choice as follows: “I have consciously allowed the Zionist movement to exert the strongest in›uence upon the cultural and spiritual activities of the Kulturbund because the Zionists as the ‘Racial Jews’ have at least given us formal guarantees of cooperation in acceptable form.”58 Kareski’s appointment was done without the consultation or approval of the League and justi‹ably stunned the Jewish board. While Singer appealed to both the more liberal members of the League and the Zionistische Vereinigung (Zionist Association), Kareski was regarded with distrust, and his appointment was seen as intolerable. He was one of the most prominent German Zionists associated with Revisionism. This movement was a conservative approach to Zionism that demanded a more rapid creation of an independent Jewish state and coalesced around the person of Vladimir Jabotinsky, whom Benito Mussolini called a “Jewish fascist.”59 In August 1933, Kareski was expelled from the Zionist Association and then created an independent State Zionist Organization (Staatszionistische Organisation) to lead the revisionist groups in Germany.60 Kareski was also very critical of the League, which he believed was in the hands of assimilationists and, in an interview of 3 January 1936, had praised the Nuremburg Laws. He stated: “The Nuremburg Laws of September 15, 1935 seem to me, apart from their implications for constitutional law, to be completely aligned toward respect for independent living on both sides.”61 Freeden suggests that this interview was arranged by Hinkel, who had only appointed Kareski at the behest of the Gestapo, to orchestrate Kareski’s downfall.62 Indeed, based on this interview and the facts surrounding Kareski’s selection, the appointment faced almost unanimous Jewish opposition. Herbert S. Levine maintains that League activities were banned at this time “in an attempt to force Kareski’s candidacy.”63 However, the League ban amid this controversy was in fact executed “to avoid possible clashes” after the assassination of the Swiss Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff on 4 February 1936 by David Frankfurter, a medical student of Jewish origins, who took matters into his own hands after recognizing the Nazi danger.64 Once tensions had lessened, the League was allowed to resume its activities on 15 March 1936. At this time, Nazi of‹cials had given up and reinstated Singer as leader. Kareski’s health was failing, and his selection faced continued opposition. The Olympics were also approaching,

What Is Jewish Music?

47

which demanded the utmost in political diplomacy, including the ordered removal of signs such as “Jews not wanted” from major roads.65 Benno Cohn, a prominent and less controversial Zionist, became Singer’s deputy director. Kareski’s appointment to the governing board of the National Representation of Jews in Germany, upon the Gestapo’s instigation, also failed in 1935.66 This episode reveals several key points about the political situation in Nazi Germany and the idea of a Nazi-Zionist alliance: ‹rst, there were factions in both the Nazi Party and among German Zionists that complicated the possibility of cooperation; second, although some Zionists applauded Kareski’s political convictions,67 the majority of Zionists were not as impatient as Kareski and many Nazi organizations, especially the Gestapo, in their desire for an immediate uni‹cation of Jewish communities, strengthening of Jewish cultural interests, and emigration to Palestine. Indeed, many Zionists viewed the League as only a bridge to a uni‹ed Jewish community—a means of inspiring Jewish renewal—and were not alarmed at this early stage by con›icting views in Jewish communities. Still, the Zionists remained dedicated to a Jewish cultural awareness, both in spirit and in practice. Despite the public’s general resistance, time and again Singer pledged to honor the Zionists’ wishes and approved of the appointment of the Zionist Benno Cohn to the League’s board. He also allowed Zionists to install Herbert Freeden in the League’s theatrical department in order to “judaize” their dramatic presentations.68 The Zionist position was even advanced on the second day of the symposium of April 1935, with the proposal of the central organization’s new statutes. The second statute proclaimed, “The goal of the association is the cultivation of Jewish cultural work in Germany.”69 The League now, more than ever before, struggled to circumscribe what constituted Jewishness in music. Looking back on this period, Singer in 1938 explained: “Without a constructive idea of Jewish art did we wake up from our depression and isolation, and grope our way like blind men towards Jewish spiritual values . . .”70 This topic and the confusion and argument surrounding it were well represented in the Third Reich’s Jewish newspapers. The papers alternately asked, “What is Jewish music? Does it exist? Can Jewish music be created, and if so, how? To what extent can the music of Jewish composers from the past be regarded as Jewish?”71 To formally address this growing debate, Singer convened under Nazi and Zionist duress the Jewish Culture League Conference in 1936. The conference, of‹cially designated “The Culture Conference of the Association of Jewish Culture Leagues in Germany” (Die Kulturtagung des Re-

48

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

ichsverbandes der Jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland), opened on the evening of 5 September 1936 in the auditorium of the Josef Lehmann-School in Berlin. After the performance of a Mendelssohn chorale, Singer addressed the audience, reached out to the Zionists in attendance, and emphasized the convergence of the Zionists’ and League’s course.72 He stated, “If I have the joy and honor to lead this gathering of the organization, this gathering of Jewish men and women jointly with our friend Benno Cohn, then it is a symbol to me and to us all that unity rules on the platform of the Culture League and that there is no difference between Zionist and non-Zionist wishes.”73 In the speeches on the following day, prominent scholars of theater and music advised League representatives how best to satisfy these common wishes through the performance of recommended Jewish literature. Arno Nadel, Hans Nathan (a last-minute replacement for the director Hans Wilhelm Steinberg), Karl Adler, and Anneliese Landau gave musical reports in the following areas respectively: Jewish liturgical music and Jewish folk song, Jewish orchestral and chamber music, Jewish choral music, and Jewish art song. During the course of the speeches, these scholars advanced several con›icting views of Jewish music. All four scholars, however, listed speci‹c Jewish musical works or incorporated musical examples appropriate to their topics, giving clues to their implicit ideas of Jewish music. In his speech, Arno Nadel, a musicologist and the choir director of the Jüdische Gemeinde in Berlin,74 gave the most concrete de‹nition and characteristics of Jewish music. He insisted that “authentic Jewish music” was music for the “synagogue and folk song.”75 The idea that folk music was authentic national music grew out of the common nineteenth-century belief that true music received its impetus from the folk (Volk).76 In English Folk Song, Cecil Sharp described folk music as “the outcome of a purely natural instinct” and said that this “unconscious output of the human mind, whatever else it may be, is always real and sincere.”77 For Béla Bartók, the folk song landscape was a bit more complicated and involved two musical forms: the urban folk song or “melodies of simple structure that are composed by dilettante authors from the upper class and propagated by that class” and rural folk music, which constitutes “a spontaneous expression of the musical feelings of that class.”78 As Sharp viewed folk song in general, Bartók considered the rural folk song “the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order.”79 This valuation of the folk song produced by the peasant or rural class was common to a whole generation at the time, including Nazi thinkers.80 Synagogue music, however, was to some extent privileged above folk music

What Is Jewish Music?

49

in Jewish communities. After all, the authenticity of Jewish folk music, in the absence of a common Jewish nation, was questionable. In this respect, several decades earlier, Richard Wagner selected synagogue music above other genres as true Jewish music, when he wrote that “the synagogue is the solitary foundation whence the Jew can draw art motives at once popular and intelligible to himself.”81 Despite Wagner’s anti-Semitism, this enduring belief resounded in Nadel’s clari‹cation in his speech that “the Jewish folk song is the most genuine when it gets its impulse from synagogue music.”82 Nadel was far more speci‹c, however, than merely naming appropriate musical genres. Based on his research, he concluded that “true Jewish themes and melodies have an eastern character.”83 This idea was consistent with the notion popular in the 1920s that the eastern European Jew or Ostjude was more authentically Jewish than the western Jew.84 Eastern European Jewish music, including Jewish art music, was accordingly judged more authentic than the music of western Jews. Gradenwitz saw it this way. Two main trends can thus be discerned in the ‹eld of modern Jewish music . . .: the eastern Jewish school, whose composers create their work on the soil of folklore and try to give musical expression to the life and sentiment of the Jewish people; and the composers of the old musical nations of the West . . . who add Jewish traits to the central European style of the time. . . . The Jewish character is the most important concern of the eastern European composers, whose musical language follows the characteristics of Jewish folk music without any attempt at an original or novel contribution to the world’s musical literature; the composers of the assimilated sphere struggle for an adequate incorporation of their Jewish spiritual experience into musical works conceived in a novel and progressive idiom.85

At the same time, many of those involved in the League looked down on the Ostjude and his music, as Heida Hermanns Holde, the wife of Artur Holde, explains in her memoirs. There were many Jews who had come to Germany within the last generation or two ›eeing the pogroms in Russia and Poland. These were known to us as the Eastern Jews. They were different in many ways from those of us whose families had lived in Germany for generations, the Western Jews. The Eastern Jews were more orthodox in their religion, they spoke Yiddish, and we tended to think of them as perhaps not as cultured as we were. . . . It seems strange to recall now,

50

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany after the horrors that Germany in›icted on Jews indiscriminately, when I was a young woman, many Western Jews felt more akin to non-Jewish Germans than to Eastern Jews. It is strange, but that was true.86

This mind-set, possibly rooted in an internalized anti-Semitism or Jewish selfhatred, provides an illuminating context from which to understand the League’s initial opposition to Masha Benya’s singing of Yiddish and Hebrew songs. Though these genres were viewed as eastern European and thus more authentic, they were also seen as culturally inferior to western music. In addition to eastern melodies, which were problematic given the League’s western tastes, Nadel also listed seven speci‹c musical traits he expected true Jewish music to exhibit: the recitative, the diatonic (in contrast to harmonic), the anapestic, the meditative, the parallelistic (“der parallelistische”), the mixed character of tonality, and the changing character of rhythm.87 He listed these musical symbols speci‹cally for the composer—offering a blueprint for not only the identi‹cation of Jewish music, which he insisted did exist, but also the construction of it. Nadel closed his speech by insisting the League perform Jewish liturgical and folk music and indicating archives where this music could be found. Hans Nathan, a professor of musicology and music critic for the Jüdische Rundschau from 1932 through 1936,88 was less essentialist than Nadel in his discussion of orchestral music and evaded the question of de‹ning criteria for Jewish music. He stated, “We renounce the pure artistic de‹nition of what is Jewish and forgo demands made a priori. It is their fault that we have overseen production directed only at Jewish people for three years.”89 This progressive sentiment—blaming the segregation of the League’s artistic work on ‹xed de‹nitions of Jewishness—was a rarity within Jewish circles of the time. However, Nathan undermined this promising start by betraying his belief in underlying criteria of Jewish music through the organization of his speech in two parts: “Jewish orchestra and chamber music” and “General literature.” Under the category of “Jewish orchestra and chamber music,” he recognized composers such as Ernest Bloch and Heinrich Schalit, and under “General literature,” he discussed composers of Jewish origin, such as Mendelssohn and Offenbach, who he did not believe displayed Jewish musical inclinations. Nathan also advanced the idea that there was more texted Jewish music, such as choruses and Lieder, than orchestral Jewish music.90 Credited in part to the intellectual capacity of Jews, the idea that Jewish music was often texted was restated in Singer’s speech to conclude the conference. Singer declared, “Jewish music is

What Is Jewish Music?

51

not orchestra music; it is vocal, ardent prayer, singing by individuals or the many, but not instrumental.”91 Singer’s and Nathan’s assertion that Jewish music was particularly vocal corresponded to tradition—no instruments were allowed in the liturgy—as well as a general belief that song played an important role in Jewish communities.92 Song was also easier to claim: text and language were potent signals of nation. Like Nathan, Karl Adler, who assumed the leadership of the Stuttgarter Jüdische Kunstgemeinschaft after he was dismissed from his post at the Stuttgart Conservatory of Music in March 1933,93 avoided a clear statement of his principles of categorization. What he did offer was useful in theory but unclear in practice. He stated, “I must again cite Dr. Prinz, who said that the subject does not determine culture.”94 Joachim Prinz, a Zionist rabbi, had delivered a speech at the conference about Jewish theater. In it, he insisted that Rembrandt was not a Jewish painter just because he painted the Judengasse in Amsterdam.95 By citing Prinz, Adler supported the idea that the artistic subject could not determine the Jewishness of the work or the work’s maker. This position was problematic for League leaders, who were forced to work with a regime that de‹ned art in that very way. Adler, again paraphrasing Prinz’s position, argued that the only logical criteria for Jewish choral music should be “the religious [tradition], the language, the land” (“das Religiöse, die Sprache, das Land”).96 This emphasis on land, a trait also of Nazi thinking, indexed a Zionist position that Jewish music could not exist outside Palestine. Already present in discussions of the League’s repertoire, this idea had been the subject of a recent quarrel waged in the Mitteilungsblätter des jüdischen Kulturbundes RheinRuhr (Newsletter of the Jewish Culture League Rhine-Ruhr). In May 1934, the head cantor of Wuppertal, Hermann Zivi, had explained that even in the synagogues the music was as diverse as the nations in which Jewish communities had emerged. He wrote, “In the East they sing in a melancholy manner, as do the Slavic and Oriental people; in the West they sing differently, and this is also true in the synagogue. The question as to whether there is such a thing as ‘Jewish music’ must be answered in the negative.”97 Joachim Stutschewsky responded in the following newsletter, arguing that, although there had been no Jewish music in the past, contemporary composers such as Ernest Bloch, Alexander Krein, and Levin Milner were composing “music of their own kind out of their deepest personal being,”98 effectively creating Jewish music. How these composers reached this “deepest personal being” and what speci‹c elements constituted this new art were left unsaid. The editors of the Rhine-Ruhr League Newsletter recognized this growing

52

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

controversy and asked Oskar Guttmann, a connoisseur and academic teacher of music, to provide a ‹nal opinion. According to Guttmann, although there was no contemporary Jewish music, in the future, there could be a Jewish music as there had been before the Diaspora, in the new Jewish land of Palestine. He wrote, “Perhaps a new Jewish music will come from a new permanent culture. Let us hope and wish so. And, for the time being, above all let us hear what Jewish musicians play and compose, though they may not yet create things as ‘Jewish’ as we might dream of.”99 This dream of a Jewish music rooted in Palestine encouraged Hermann Swet, Salli Levi, and Joachim Stutschewsky to create the World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine, which existed between 1936 and 1940.100 It may also have been a factor in the League manager Werner Levie’s trip to Tel Aviv, approved by Hinkel, in April 1936 to discuss a plan to transfer the Berlin League to Palestine.101 The talks came to nothing, leaving the League with no direct means of satisfying those who believed Jewish music was dependent on a Jewish land. Indeed, such a position put the League in an impossible situation. How could the League perform Jewish music, as regime leaders demanded, and foster a Jewish spirit, as the Zionists insisted, when many denied the very existence of Jewish music in Germany? In his speech at the Jewish Culture League Conference, Prinz contended that the League, for this reason, could only have a “national-pedagogical” function—building “a bridge from a denationalized Jewry, living remote from Jewish prime sources, to Jewish life.”102 He believed the League could not create authentic “Jewish art,” but could encourage a Jewish awareness, which could foster future Jewish cultural activities in Palestine. In his presentation, Adler did not advance the same conclusion. Though he restated Prinz’s basis for such a conviction, he also explained that he could “feel something” in the creations of Jews103—an insinuation that implies a sweeping de‹nition of Jewish music as the composition of Jewish composers. Adler then addressed other matters: he called for a quality standard, insisting that League leaders should not select a piece when the choice is between a bad Jewish piece and a bad non-Jewish piece;104 he also called for “the activation of the amateurs” in the musical performances of the League—a means of fostering a united national community Nazi policymakers similarly valued in their own programs regarding the accepted Aryan population.105 The ‹nal musical speech, by Anneliese Landau, is a telling microcosm of the confusion that reigned in the Jewish Culture League on this topic. At various points in her speech, she advanced all major, con›icting attitudes about Jewish music. Her opening line reiterated the Zionist position. She explained, “For the

What Is Jewish Music?

53

time being, there is still no Jewish art song in the stylistic sense; the generation born in Palestine will hopefully give it to us one day.”106 Today we can and want to concern ourselves ‹rst with the art song that the Jewish composers have written and still write for us, wholly independent at present from whether or not this art song is written to a religious or secular text, or to texts in the Hebrew, German or French languages, whether or not this art song grows from melodies of old Jewish folk songs, or whether or not this art song carries the melody of the country of the composer’s birth.107

In this way, she quickly moved from a dismissal of Jewish art song to this af‹rmation of all art song composers of Jewish origin—a practical solution to the immediate performance needs of the League. She then offered something of a gradation of Jewishness, if you will, as she discussed the songs of Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and Offenbach. She explained, “These songs have nothing to do with the Jewishness of their composers. They grow from the atmosphere of the country in which they were written.”108 In contrast, she listed composers such as Joel Engel, Heinrich Schalit, Darius Milhaud, and Ernest Bloch. Within the twentieth-century art song tradition, she explained, these composers created Jewish Lieder “in complete consciousness by Jews for Jews.”109 In this short speech, Landau was thus able to support the Zionist position, promote composers of Jewish origin as a practical direction for the League’s future work, and provide clues about an implicit standard of Jewish musical authenticity. Singer further complicated the discussion in his closing remarks on 7 September. He agreed with Nadel that Jewish folk song and liturgical music were true Jewish music, but concluded: “The Jewish folk song and liturgical music must not be performed in the concert halls, but rather in the synagogue.”110 Already in 1934, Singer himself pointed out the public’s lack of interest in concerts held at the synagogue and vowed to hold the majority of League concerts in the Berlin Theater.111 Singer’s conclusion about the proper setting for Jewish music was therefore hardly constructive in a practical sense. After announcing a contest to support contemporary composition of Jewish music,112 the Jewish Culture League Conference ended with no speci‹c standard for Jewish music. The event had generated different ideas and recommendations, many of which resurrected ideas from German Cultural Zionism—a movement that had already wrestled with the complications created by the idea of Jewish culture in Germany. But they were at odds with each other or

54

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

immaterial given the League’s circumstances in Germany. Newspapers from the period recognized the complex debate that had unfolded during this conference. The Jüdische Rundschau concluded, “All in all, one may well say that it was a dif‹cult conference in which actual worries about practical work were in the foreground.”113 Still, many Nazis were at least satis‹ed with the League’s new devotion to the question of Jewish music. An article of 11 September 1936 explained, “The reports were so completely in accordance with the mind and hearts of the Nazis that the overseer Hinkel explained that ‘from the German side nothing [was] to be added nor to be cut.’”114 The Zionist Association, for different reasons, was also satis‹ed with the conference reports and, in the following month, exhorted its members to embrace the League at last. The program formation of the ‹rst months, however, seemed to show that the Culture League was not yet seized by any such Jewish cultural desire. Thus, it happened that our people participated in the work of the Culture League only in very small measure. Three years of development among Jews have fundamentally changed the circumstances. The Culture League has become conscious of its responsibility for Jewish tasks. Its artistic leadership is making a serious effort to shape the work of the Culture League in a Jewish way. Zionists are playing a decisive role in the leadership of the Association of Jewish Culture Leagues. . . . Thus we call today on the Zionists to join the Culture Leagues.115

This momentary truce did not mean that the League was now able to execute its work without criticism. In fact, in the ‹rst volume of Musica Hebraica (1938), the publication of the short-lived World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine, Oskar Guttmann took the opportunity to attack the League, its leaders, and its programs. Programmes were based, in the ‹rst instance, on the traditions of a bourgeois culture of the past, regardless of all the newer spiritual trends within and without Judaism. Thus, oblivious of the fact that new musical forces, such as the folk-music movement, community singing, and the youth movement had sprung up in all parts of the world creating a new musical culture in the Jewish community (Musikalische Gemeinschaftskultur), the [Culture League] continued to pursue the old familiar lines.116

What Is Jewish Music?

55

He continued: Another matter which the [Culture League] movement had at ‹rst altogether ignored was the question of what was speci‹cally Jewish. There was widespread reaction against this position, particularly in west and south Germany, with the result that individual cultural organizations and Jewish evening academies were established. Here, this essential question was seen in its true perspective, namely how to set about the creation of a Jewish musical culture on the isolated Jewish soil. Unfortunately, these attempts met with little response on the part of the older generation, and the efforts of the younger groups being far from wholehearted, they remained without tangible results.117

Singer immediately responded in a letter to Guttmann of 11 July 1938. He wrote, “The ‹rst issue of Musica Hebraica is on the table in front of me, and in it you have succeeded once again in pounding a rusty nail on the middle of the head.”118 Singer’s frustration is obvious and understandable, given the numerous factions, debates, and negotiations he had had to endure during the League’s tenure. Still, he was able to ‹ght back by citing the League’s numerous contributions to Jewish musical life and listing speci‹c Jewish musical compositions the League had performed. Aside from Guttmann’s continued interest, however, the Jewish Culture League Conference may have represented the peak of interest in the question of Jewish music within the League. Jewish nationalism and Jewish identity were no longer hot-button issues in Jewish communities.119 In the following years, as conditions worsened in Nazi Germany, other concerns took center stage. First, the League suffered from worsening monetary need and the emigration of its performers.120 The League barely found the funds to buy its theater on Kommandantenstrasse in the summer of 1938, which they were set to lose in October 1938. To remedy the situation, Levie once again attempted to generate interest in the idea of moving the League to Palestine in June 1938.121 Second, many German Jews continued to view the League as a ghetto organization and refused to support the League when it needed new members most.122 More signi‹cant, members were beginning to see realized the dangers of their situation in Nazi Germany. As already noted, after 1935, Jews were no longer legally considered German. In 1936, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland and warned of war within four years. In everyday life, Jews experienced increasing discrimination, even in Berlin, in addition to escalating harassment in legislation. Jews

56

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

could no longer stay at hotels in Germany.123 For touring musicians within the League, this law meant that home stays had to be arranged before concert tours. The general economic situation of the Jewish population also continued to deteriorate. At least half of all Jewish workers were unemployed by early 1938.124 During this bleak time, music as entertainment became the order of the day. On 6 September 1938, Micha Michalowitz criticized the League’s choice to perform Ibsen’s Gespenster, because it did not meet this requirement. He wrote, “we need comfort and we need relaxation. In this phase of our life, the theater can have no other function than this.”125 With the outbreak of war—the Annexation of Austria in spring 1938 and invasion of Poland in 1939—this need was recognized with increased urgency. Levie was put in charge of the League at this time—a time that witnessed the beginning of the end: Kristallnacht. The “Night of Broken Glass” was a series of riots, lootings, and arrests that took place on the night of 9 November and into the early hours of 10 November against Jews in Germany after a young Jewish boy shot and killed a representative of the Nazi Party in Paris. Over 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, 91 men were murdered, and an estimated 300 to 500 Jews committed suicide. The Nazi regime held German Jews responsible for their own destruction and even issued them a bill of 100,000,000 Reichsmarks.126 During this catastrophe, Kurt Singer was visiting the United States and would never again see Germany or his beloved League stage. On 31 December, the League’s various branches were dissolved and only the Berlin organization continued as the Jüdischer Kulturbund in Deutschland e.V. (Jewish Culture League in Germany, Inc.).127 At this time, all Jewish publishing houses and Jewish newspapers were shut down. The League would now be the only site for these activities—with the establishment of the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt—as well as the only place Jews were allowed to see movies.128 On 4 September 1939, Fritz Wisten, previously engaged in the League’s theatrical productions, had replaced Levie, who left Germany at the end of August. In a report over the League’s work during the 1939–40 season, Wisten explained that the entertainment needs of the Jewish public were the ‹rst priority.129 After 1938, only the Nazis in charge had the luxury to continue advancing their ideological agenda, which they did with additional legislative restrictions. Three days after Kristallnacht, Goebbels issued the following regulation. Since the National Socialist state has already made it possible for the Jews to create and care for their own cultural life within special Jewish organizations for 5 years now, it is no longer permissible to allow them to participate in per-

What Is Jewish Music?

57

formances of German culture. Jews are therefore no longer allowed, effective immediately, to enter such performances.130

At this time, they also issued new requirements for League lecturers. Anneliese Landau recalls, “From then on, I was allowed merely to speak about Jewish composers. No one was aware, how many Jewish composers did exist in the world. I did research on this subject with the help of a music-librarian in the State-Library, Maria Neuendorf, in whose home I had spent Christmaspart[ies] before the Nazis[’] take over.”131 Her only criterion for the selection of these composers was Jewish birth,132 which was compatible with the de‹nition of convenience that reigned at the time, as interest waned in the debate about Jewish music and Nazi policy took full control of the League’s future. In 1938, the composer Erich Katz, for example, also supported this criterion in his discussion of Jewish music. He wrote, “Often enough the cry for ‘more Jewish music’ resounds. The old problem of what Jewish music is, if it is Yemenite or eastern Jewish or something else, will not be discussed here. We will surely be in agreement on this much: that it must be music [made] by Jews.”133 At this point, the debate on Jewish music was at an end. But it is remarkable that the Jewish Culture League, under internal and external pressure, and amid political turmoil and economic hardship, sustained a heated debate about the meaning and nature of Jewish music for most of its tenure. This dispute and deliberation illustrates the fact that Jewish music is hardly of a ‹xed or innate essence, just as people are not. Rather, ideas of Jewish music, like all national music, are created in a process of negotiation and often contestation particular to a given time and place. This is an extreme example of this process. However, it effectively challenges enduring, yet ›awed, ideas of national music from the recent past. To illustrate, in 1986, The New Harvard Dictionary of Music de‹ned nationalism in music as “the use in art music of materials that are identi‹ably national . . . in character. These may include actual folk music, melodies or rhythms that merely recall folk music, and nonmusical programmatic elements drawn from national folklore, myth, or literature.”134 These elements may be borrowed, but, in genuine national music, the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, among others, argued that they arise from the unconscious as an a priori phenomenon. That is to say, a composer cannot help but express his nationality within his music. Vaughan Williams explained, “Smetana’s debt to his own national music was . . . unconscious. . . . he could no more avoid speaking his own musical language than he could help breathing his native air.”135 Nicolai Lopat-

58

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

nikoff, who was involved with the World Center for Jewish Music in Palestine, would have agreed: “In music one inevitably ‹nds re›ected . . . all the diverse elements of national character.”136 This belief in a preconceived national music—the unconscious and inevitable outpouring of a national composer—is the product of an immoral and illogical system of essentialist thinking that denies variation and the reality of each person’s “situation.”137 It is also dangerous. Predetermined musical categories based on race and nation, though seemingly innocuous, help reinforce the idea that national groups are fundamentally separate. This mind-set can help pave the way for discrimination and even genocide. The traditional conception of national music is unsound on a more fundamental level as well. Anthropologists today recognize that nations have always been far from ‹xed and thus could hardly support such a distinct and predetermined national music. Rather, as Benedict Anderson explains, the nation is imagined “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellowmembers, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in minds of each lives the image of their communion.”138 To be more precise, nations and nationality are mutable categories that are constituted and reconstituted based on particular social and political agendas over time.139 It stands to reason that national music is similarly less than ‹nite. Indeed, when joined, these two terms national and music open up myriad possible de‹nitions, uses, and conceits that are always shifting, and measuring a variety of local and global in›uences. This is especially true in the case of Jewish music. What is Jewish after all? Does it refer to a national body, an ethnicity, race, religion, or all of the above? Many musicologists now recognize the limitations of the initial static conception of national music as re›ected in the 2003 edition of The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Words amending the 1986 de‹nition are italicized: nationalism in music “traditionally has denoted the use in art music of materials that suggest a national or regional character.”140 In the most recent edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Richard Taruskin also exhibits a distrust of the earlier idea of national music: “Nationalism should not be equated with the possession or display of distinguishing national characteristics—or not, at any rate, until certain questions are asked and at least provisionally answered. The most important ones are, ‹rst, who is doing the distinguishing? And second, to what end?”141 This revision, though under way, is in no way complete. Within the ‹eld of Jewish musical studies, in fact, Kay Kaufman Shelemay points out that some scholars still adhere to lingering “mythologies of a single unchanging tradition.” In 1995, she explained, “When a scholar

What Is Jewish Music?

59

suggests in a public lecture that there is no single Jewish music, but that diversity and change have characterized musical expression in Jewish life past and present, she or he is still greeted with ambivalence, characterized as taking a pessimistic or even negative view of the subject.”142 This attachment to the idea of a ‹xed Jewish music is understandable. For one, it is easier. It is indeed dif‹cult to discuss Jewish music if we admit it is a ›uid and ever-changing concept. But such admission is necessary. By approaching the concept of Jewish music as a process and analyzing the shifting positions therein, we gain a more nuanced understanding of Jewish music at a given time, while avoiding the dangers of past approaches to the term.

chapter three

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”: Weill, Schoenberg, and Bloch

given the debates on jewish music and jewish identity, musical programming was necessarily complicated in the League. In May 1935, frustrated by ongoing League turmoil, Singer issued the following plea. A second summer of the Culture League approaches. And for the second time, we are faced with the question of [‹nding] a repertoire that does not complicate artistic demand with ‹nancial dif‹culties or punish serious ambition with public resistance. Repertoire politics for 20,000 people? It is impossible if one directs himself according to the wishes of these thousands. We may hear only a few hundred voices from this huge choir. But we hear them clearly. For instance, play classics. Or play Jewish theater pieces. Or fewer works emphasizing Jewishness. Perform funny pieces. Perform tragic pieces. Perform Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Hauptmann . . . More opera . . . More Brahms and Bach and ‹nally some Mahler. Be more diverse in the choice of lectures . . . These are the parts from which we are supposed to make a score. And this isn’t even all of them. “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne.” Let us be discreet in dif‹cult times. Let us bear our fate together, but let us alone bear the responsibility for what we can achieve in the Culture League.1

For a fresh start, Singer went so far in this publication as to solicit advice directly on the upcoming program. This experiment in public diplomacy was unique and, after a limited response (only thirty replies), abandoned.2 The repertoire debate would continue, as would other challenges to program formation: the League’s economic need as well as simple errors and inconsistencies from both inside and outside the organization. For instance, Gustav Mahler’s song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen was once proscribed for Jewish audiences. A new censor in Hinkel’s central of‹ce could not believe 60

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

61

Mahler, whose music he so much enjoyed, could possibly be Jewish.3 Similarly, in 1933, Singer mistakenly listed Maurice Ravel among a group of living Jewish composers, which included Ernst Toch, Erich Walter Sternberg, and Ernest Bloch, among others.4 Singer may well have been in›uenced by questions concerning Ravel’s ancestry raised by Nazi writers, who believed the composer of “Hebrew Songs” must be Jewish. Given similarities between the name Ravel and Rabbele (little rabbi), many in the United States and elsewhere made the same conclusion.5 Ravel, unconcerned about the repercussions of this line of thinking in Germany, explained to his friends, “As long as the music of a genius like Mendelssohn is forbidden to be performed in Germany, I lay no value on being played there.”6 Musical politics, such as those surrounding Ravel, impacted the repertoire and restricted program options more and more each year. Attempting to respond to the political climate, composers living at the time occasionally made the situation worse. For example, in July 1936, Igor Stravinsky learned the League had requested permission to mount a production of his Histoire du Soldat (1918). Willy Strecker, the co-owner and director of the prestigious German publishing house Schott, feared that such a performance would be sure to animate the old rumor that Stravinsky was Jewish: “if you permit the Jewish Kulturbund to perform it,” he wrote to the composer, “your enemies will gleefully term you, as well as your art, ‘Jewish,’ spoiling everything we have managed to nurture.”7 Rather than refusing, however, Strecker demanded an in›ated fee of 100 marks per performance, well beyond the League’s means. Shortly after, he changed his mind when he learned that performances were restricted to the Jewish community only and would not attract publicity. He also realized that any prohibitive action—an insurmountable charge or direct refusal—could be interpreted as “an explicit act of unfriendliness towards Jews” that might result in “unfavorable repercussions” for the composer especially in America. After advising Stravinsky to allow the performance with a “small reduction” of the fee, with some reluctance, the composer granted his permission, and Histoire was performed in Berlin on 4 November 1936 and 23 January 1937.8 Still, the repertoire that resulted from this confusion subsists as a record of musical reception. As such, it offers numerous insights about Jewish identity within the League and a more nuanced understanding of both musical politics and Jewish music in Nazi Germany. To make use of this potential, chapters 3 to 6 treat the League’s musical programs as a collection of musical objects.9 Just as Walter Benjamin presents his book collection as an extension of his own identity in “Unpacking My Library,” a music historian can assess a musical collec-

62

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

tion by analyzing the principles of organization and interrelated issues of identity at play.10 What gaps or omissions appear in the collection? How do these gaps challenge or correspond to objects prominent within the repertoire? These considerations allow the musical objects within the League’s repertoire to acquire a documentary character as sources of knowledge about the varied interests, experiences, and cultural values of their collectors—the leaders of the League—and the members they served.11 The information revealed by the repertoire, however, must also be approached as chosen—a projection of a willed identity. League organizers were not completely free in their musical choices. Nazi politics, after all, played a signi‹cant role in program formation. This Nazi context also had the ability to create new meaning for composers and musical objects in the League collection. Within museum studies, this transformative power has been explored by scholars, such as Philip Fisher, who argued that objects can be effaced and remade within the museum, acquiring a new signi‹cance in a new setting.12 For example, a sword, once used for battle, becomes an object of history or even art in a museum display. Within the League setting, this transformative potential was not only at play but perhaps more potent. Music can accumulate multiple layers of meaning through associations as well as the shared experience of time, inherent in the medium. This experience includes historical time, ritualistic time, and biographical time, as well as the “real” duration of music in the present performance. These layers of time intermingle to create new narratives for composers as well as those both performing and in attendance.13 Context is thus essential to an accurate examination of the League’s repertoire. With these considerations in mind, let us begin our analysis with an obvious gap in the repertoire: music by Jewish composers. Based on ‹gure 6 and table 1, music by German composers, rather than by Jewish composers, made up the bulk of the repertoire, especially in the ‹rst three years of the League’s existence. As we have seen, there was much debate about Jewish music, and it was a clear theoretical preoccupation. But do the ‹gure and table mean Jewish music in practice—in performance—was in fact merely a sideline activity or tangential experiment? Circumstantial evidence suggests yes. While League leaders professed a strong desire for authentic Jewish music around 1936, no one suggested following the lines of other national schools, or even the Society for Jewish Folk Music (Obschchestvo Yevreyskoy Narodnoy Muziki). This organization, founded in St. Petersburg in 1908, was devoted to the collection of Jewish folk and syna-

Fig. 6. Most popular composers. Popularity is based on number of concerts in which the composer’s music was performed, rather than number of compositions performed.

TABLE 1. Performance Breakdown Most Popular Composers 1933–34 Mendelssohn Beethoven Schubert Mozart Handel Tschaikovsky Brahms Verdi Bach Dvorák Mahler

14 15 15 13 7 4 11 1 4 4

1934–35

1935–36

1936–37

1937–38

1938–39

1939–40

1940–41

4 15 11 11 9 3 6 4 5 2 2

9 12 14 8 8 5 8 2 8 1 4

11 4 5 4 7 4 4 2 4 2 1

6

2

10

4

1 2 4 5

1

2 7

5

4

5

2

2 1

2

2 2

3 3

64

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

gogue music and, from it, the creation of modern national Jewish music. In Hungary, Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók had similarly turned to their national heritage, collecting folk music in order to build national music. They, like so many nationally oriented thinkers and composers at the time, believed the collection and study of a country’s indigenous music was a fundamental ‹rst step toward the creation of its art music. League leaders could have heeded this logic and organized such an approach as a remedy to their Jewish music problem. The tools and methodological theory to support such a project were in fact right on their doorstep: the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, later known as the Berlin School of Comparative Musicology, had been working to collect music from all the peoples of the world since its inception in 1900. Its leaders, Carl Stumpf (1841–1936) originally and Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (1877–1935) from 1905 until his emigration two months after the Nazi takeover, had produced articles and recorded musical examples that could have helped the League with their own collection of Jewish folk song and synagogue music.14 Why did the League ignore these models and resources? First, the League lacked time and had to operate despite lack of resolution or focus. Collecting folk material and then creating music based on it would have taken more preparation and energy than the League could afford (keep in mind, the organization was never envisioned as a permanent undertaking). Personalities associated with the League, however, did advance their own projects along these nationalistic lines. The composer Jakob Schoenberg (1900–1956), the product of an orthodox cantor’s family in Bavaria (and remote relative of Arnold Schoenberg), worked “to acquire a Jewish musical style, although working in Germany.”15 Addressing his method, in his “About Jewish Music,” J. Schoenberg explained that since “the rebirth of the Jewish state after centuries of persecution,” a true Jewish composer has a duty to honor his “place in the cultural life of nations.”16 For this task, J. Schoenberg continued, “Knowledge of the available material in Jewish music is indispensable for further development of this music. In this way the heritage of impressions, colour tones, and characteristic features of Jewish music is handed on.”17 One important source of this knowledge appeared in 1922 and 1923 with the publication of volumes 2, 3, and 4 of the Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies by A. Z. Idelsohn, who was engaged at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati from 1924 until his retirement in 1934.18 These volumes recorded countless transcriptions of Jewish melodies that Idelsohn had documented in Palestine, which were a revelation for Jewish musicians and scholars at the time.19 Hein-

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

65

rich Schalit (1886–1976) drew from this work as he composed his “Eine Freitagabend Liturgie,” published in 1933 and performed by the League on 25 June 1934.20 Max Ettinger (1874–1951) relied on Idelsohn’s transcription of Yemenite Jewish songs in his composition of “Das Lied von Moses,” an oratorio based on biblical texts, performed in September 1935.21 The scholar Arno Nadel also made use of Idelsohn’s source material and based on it, in his 1923 article, argued that there were four primary characteristics of Jewish music, which he also described at the Culture League Conference: (1) recitative; (2) diatonic melody; (3) anapestic rhythms analogous to the Hebrew language; and (4) parallel motion.22 Following in Idelsohn’s footsteps, from 1923 until 1938, Nadel even collected traditional synagogue music for Berlin Jewish communities. Like J. Schoenberg, he recognized that this material was useful for the creation of an authentic Jewish music.23 These composers worked in the national tradition of the Weimar era, contributing to a music that was both modern and Jewish. However, a large-scale operation within the League to follow their lead was beyond the scope and original vision of the League. Not only that, League leaders would have lacked support for such a mission, both from Hinkel and his associates, who thought an appropriate repertoire already existed, and from many of its Jewish members, most of whom remained “distant from Jewish pieces or pieces considered to be Jewish.”24 What the League ultimately performed was the result of compromise. The League included Jews of disparate backgrounds and perspectives, and, on the whole, audiences favored the familiar. Then again, even if there had been collective agreement, the results of organized Jewish music making would have faced other challenges. For one, the Jewish press at the time questioned the authenticity of culture created through organization.25 This position was analogous to the Reich Culture Chamber’s own policies on the creation of art. At the beginning of 1934, Goebbels explained that it was not the task of the Reich Chamber of Culture “to produce art.” Art, he said, is never made “by organizations” (“von Organisationen”).26 This view challenged the League’s single attempt to sponsor original Jewish composition: the composition competition announced at the close of the Jewish Culture League Conference, which honored Werner Seelig-Bass’s Feierliches Vorspiel, a choral work by Richard Fuchs, an a cappella choral work by Hugo Adler, as well as works by Walter Hirschberg, Julius Chajes, Max Kowalski, and Erich Katz.27 For these reasons, League leaders had to ‹nd Jewish music already in existence that would suit the concerns of its heterogeneous constituency—at least from 1934 through 1937, during the heyday of the debate on Jewish music. To

66

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

this end, rather than organizing their own national school, they pursued several strategies. They programmed music created previously by the members of the Society for Jewish Folk Music: Lieder by Julius (Joel) Engel (1868–1927) was performed in December 1935 and February 1937, Lieder by Alexander Krein (1883–1951) in February 1937, as well as Die Chaluzim by Jacob Weinberg (1879–1956) in September 1938. Second, they advanced the music of local, contemporary celebrities, such as Heinrich Schalit, Gerhard Goldschlag, Edvard Moritz, Jakob Schoenberg, and Berthold Goldschmidt, who composed for the League Variations on a Palestine Shepherd’s Song before he left Germany for England in 1935.28 The director Chemjo Winawer, with Zionist sympathies, championed the music of many of these Jewish composers. With his Winawer Hanigun Choir, he performed their works, in addition to Jewish liturgical and folk songs, for League audiences.29 League leaders also gravitated toward composers considered national—that is to say, composers who endeavored to signal their nationality in their music. The League frequently presented the works of the Czech nationalists, including Dvorak (sixteen times) and Smetena. For example, the League orchestra performed Dvorak’s “Slavonic Dances” on 19 November 1939 and, on 27 November 1938, Smetana’s “Die Moldau,”30 a musical depiction of the mighty Vltava or Moldau, the Bohemian river that runs through Prague. They also performed Kodály’s “Psalmus Hungaricus” on 27 May 1935 and, on 9 April 1940, works by Albéniz, who used Spanish folk music to create his national art. Music from Russia’s national school, the Mighty Handful, received special attention, however, both in concert performances and programs. League musicians presented Borodin’s “Polvetzian Dances” from Prince Igor on 6 January 1936 and 20 June 1933; Rimsky-Korsakov’s Violin Concerto on 11 and 16 May 1940; and excerpts from Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in February and April 1934. Landau also highlighted the development of Russian national opera and Michael Glinka’s rise as a national composer in the program from February 1934.31 Singer revisited the topic in honor of the performance on 19 November 1937 of Tschaikovsky’s Eugen Onegin, which, like Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, was based on the writing of Pushkin and considered one of the greatest nineteenthcentury Russian operas. In his article “Russische Musik (Zur Eugen OneginAufführung),” he intimated the cause of the League’s speci‹c fascination with the music of the Russian national school by crediting the Russian nationalists with inspiring the Society for Jewish Folk Music in Russia.32 Indeed, one of the society’s student founders, Joel Engel, was encouraged by the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov. Rimsky-Korsakov had proclaimed, “The Jewish race pos-

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

67

sesses a vast melodic treasure; Jewish music awaits its genius.”33 Perhaps Singer and other League leaders programmed music considered national in the hope that it would once again act as a model, spontaneously inciting a national Jewish music in Germany without costing the League valuable time or energy. This is the proper background from which to assess the League’s presentation of authentic Jewish music. It was a focal point that can in fact be recognized as quite signi‹cant when measured against the limitations posed by the League situation. This is not to say, however, that our topic is made any less complicated. The valuation of authentic Jewish music was fraught as ever with contradictions. As we saw in chapter 2, the Jewish Culture League Conference yielded no de‹nitive solution to the problem of a Jewish repertoire. However, certain League leaders, such as Anneliese Landau and Hans Nathan, hinted at practical criteria of authentic Jewish music that governed program selection. In order to access these criteria, we will look at the standing of three composers of Jewish origin—Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg, and Ernest Bloch. Only one, Bloch, was championed as a composer of authentic Jewish music. As we will see, he most closely harmonized with the League context. Weill, on the other hand, was at the the opposite end of the spectrum: he was never performed. Why? The omission of Weill, the most successful composer for the stage to emerge during the Weimar Republic and the grandson of a master hazzan or cantor, challenges the stated goals of the League. At the Jewish Culture League Conference, Singer declared, “It is our duty to perform playwrights of all languages who, as Jews in Germany, are no longer performed on any stages: Schnitzler, Molnar, Frank, Werfel, Heimann, Bernstein, Langer, Offenbach.”34 Why did the League not similarly take responsibility for Weill? Singer’s list actually draws attention to Weill’s absence. Weill collaborated with Franz Werfel on The Eternal Road, along with the producer Max Reinhardt and the American impresario Meyer Weisgal. All four men agreed and, in May 1934, put in written contract that the work was to be “a musical biblical morality play to express the spiritual origin, the earliest mythical history, and the eternal destiny of the Jewish people to whom they belong.”35 The piece also mirrored the Jews’ situation in Nazi Germany: at the start of the play, a rabbi warns his congregation that they are about to be expelled from the country they have long called home. Hoping the League could stage the work, Werfel wrote to the League’s Julius Bab in a letter dated 28 August 1934.36 Despite the work’s direct appeal to Jewish communities and its political parallels, however, the League did not perform The Eternal Road and ignored Weill’s music altogether. Of course, there are practical explanations that could account for this ex-

68

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

clusion. In a memo of 14 June 1935 to trusted League personnel concerning the dif‹culties facing the League and its search for a Jewish repertoire, Singer stated, “The new work by Werfel is hardly performable in our space.”37 Indeed, The Eternal Road was a spectacle of immense size. After a number of setbacks, which included the reconstruction of the Manhattan Opera House, the work premiered in New York on 7 January 1937 with a ‹ve-tiered set and production costs that Weisgal recalled reached over a half a million dollars.38 Nevertheless, Nazi policy played a more decisive role in the absence of Weill’s music. In his memoirs, Kurt Baumann, recalled, “The so-called leftist authors of the Weimar period were, of course, forbidden from the start, not only to the Germans, but also to us.”39 The left-leaning Weill certainly fell into this category. But the Nazi ban on the composer at ‹rst appears contradictory. Nazi of‹cials could not tolerate the perceived “polluting” in›uence of Jewish music in German concert halls, but they encouraged Jewish music within the con‹nes of the Jewish Culture League. Why would Hinkel’s of‹ce not apply a similar double standard in the case of Weill and other “leftist” artists of the Weimar era? One feature that distinguished certain works of the 1920s (such as Weill’s Dreigroschenoper and Ernst Kr &enek’s Johnny spielt auf!) was their inclusion of jazz—at least a German version of jazz. German nationalistic writers despised jazz for its link with Africans or African Americans, the United States, its sexual power, and the unsuitability of jazz rhythms for marching. When Nazi scientists concluded that Jews had large proportions of “negroid blood,” enemies of jazz also had enough justi‹cation to link jazz with the Jews. This anti-Semitic opportunity was exploited at the 1938 Düsseldorf exposition of “degenerate music,” which was advertised with a poster of “a monkey like Negro,” wearing the Star of David and playing the saxophone.40 However, Weill’s use of jazz was not the sole cause of his proscription in the League. Shabtai Petrushka, the arranger and leader of Sid Kay’s Fellows, a popular swing band during the Weimar era, continued to perform jazz before the League’s audiences—a break for some from the classical repertoire.41 Like Jewish music, his music was deemed safe within the borders of the organization. Goebbels was also forced to allow some jazz on German radios to prevent Germans from seeking it out on powerful foreign radio stations that framed their programs with anti-Nazi news.42 Ultimately, the use of jazz was not Weill’s fatal ›aw. Rather, Hinkel and his associates were motivated by their view that composers prominent in the Weimar Republic were somehow dangerous—not just on Aryan stages, but also in the League. Weill himself learned of this judgment

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

69

in 1930 when he was curious enough to attend a Nazi rally in Augsberg. At the meeting, he was shocked to hear himself denounced, together with Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann, as a threat to the country.43 Weill’s perceived danger violated a Nazi clause for the League prohibiting “communist and revolutionary references, as well as authors who were known as outspoken anti-Nazis.”44 The tenth rule of the Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt’s “Richtlinien für die Tätigkeit des Reichsverbandes der Jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland,” dated 13 August 1935, similarly proclaimed, “The leaders of the Reichsverband of the Jewish Culture League and the respective local leaders of the Culture League are responsible for making sure that the performances are not directed against the National Socialist state and its laws and basic demands in any shape or in any way.”45 Weill posed a challenge to this clause through his association with Bertolt Brecht, who was seen as “subversive,” a staunch Marxist, and loyal supporter of the Communist cause.46 Indeed, as early as 1923, Brecht was number ‹ve on a list of people the regime planned to arrest.47 Brecht and Weill’s collaboration, repeatedly highlighted in Nazi condemnations of Weill, produced several works with revolutionary potential and biting political criticisms, including Aufsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, a critique of the laissez-faire society of the late 1920s. This sort of negative theater, appropriate for parody, caricature, and denunciation, was designed to arouse dissatisfaction in the audience in keeping with Brecht’s idea of Verfremdung (alienation).48 Through Verfremdung, according to Brecht, the audience was able to gain an understanding of another person’s actions or fate in such a way that “the spectator in the theater receives a new attitude.”49 With this revolutionary potential, “the theater no longer tries to make the spectator forget the world,” but rather “now offers him access to the world.”50 This was art as a means to engage with reality rather than escape it. Regime authorities could not allow such instigation to undermine their use of the League. The League was created in part to quell social unrest—not provoke it!51 Other Nazi bans stemmed from similar concerns. For instance, authorities excised the “to be or not to be” monologue from the League’s planned performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. With no of‹cial recourse or explanation, Baumann turned to his friend Klaus Jedzek, who was dramatic adviser at the Prussian State Theater under Gustaf Gründgens. Jedzek invited one of Hinkel’s “readers” to a restaurant and was able to ‹nd out the reason for the monologue’s removal. Baumann explains, “It turned out that the line ‘the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,’ spoken on a Jewish stage, could give the impression that the Jews were complaining about their treatment by the Nazis.

70

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

For this reason they eliminated not only this line, but at the same time the entire monologue.”52 Hinkel similarly censored a performance of Mendelssohn’s Psalm 22, “Mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen?” (“My God, why hast Thou forsaken me”), because it was “of course text-wise very offensive” (“allerdings textlich sehr anzueglichen”).53 Like the Hamlet monologue, the psalm text could be interpreted as a description of the Jews’ plight in Nazi Germany. The text states, “But I am a worm, and not a man, scorned by men, and despised by the people. All those who see me laugh and scorn me, open their lip, and shake their heads.”54 Given Nazi racist policies and the title—an indictment of God for allowing such treatment—the psalm as a whole could be seen as a denunciation of Hitler’s government. Hinkel and his censors could not tolerate even the suggestion of such insolence on a Jewish stage. When they noticed this perceived threat,55 they took immediate action. This state of censorship was comparable to the Soviet Union’s governmental policies at the time. These policies were designed to regulate political criticism in art and promote an idealized image of the nation through the organization of the arts and the cultural policy of “socialist realism.”56 A. A. Zhdanov, Stalin’s cultural henchman, ‹rst de‹ned socialist realism in 1934 as a demand for “truthfulness from the artist,” including a “historically concrete portrayal of reality in its revolutionary development.”57 Of course this “truthfulness” was to be combined with “the task of the ideological remaking and education of laboring people in the spirit of socialism.”58 That is to say, artists were actually encouraged to avoid depicting the reality of everyday life. Instead, they were to present pictures of a model Soviet society in order to encourage loyalty and educate the people about the proper behavior of a Soviet citizen. Although cultural leaders in Nazi Germany shunned such concrete parameters for the creative artist, under both regimes, artists could not remain in favor without respecting the regime’s agenda, and the artistic presentation of criticism or complaint was censored.59 The composer Hanns Eisler recognized the effectiveness of this cultural policy in the Third Reich, and, despite his socialist loyalties, opposition to capitalism and fascism, and maltreatment in Nazi Germany, praised Hitler for his awareness of the power of music. Explaining the ban that existed on his own music, Eisler stated that Hitler exploited music to create “emotional loyalty”; “that is why he will not allow counteracting emotional forces to exist in his state.”60 Based on this logic, even artwork from the past, such as the creations of Mendelssohn and Shakespeare, was subject to censorship both in accepted German concert halls and the Jewish Culture League. Weill’s threat to the regime and its system of establishing allegiance through

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

71

music was far more menacing than Shakespeare’s or Mendelssohn’s, however. Weill worked within a powerful new medium designed to appeal to a large audience. As early as 1927, Weill called for musical theater to alter its course in order to attract a wider segment of the population and respond to the conditions of modernity.61 In 1929, he proclaimed, “The boundaries between ‘art music’ and ‘music for use’ must be brought closer together and gradually eliminated. That’s why we’ve attempted to compose music that’s capable of meeting the musical needs of the broad population without giving up artistic substance.”62 To generate this broad appeal and obliterate the distinction between high and low art, Weill and other Weimar-era composers represented the everyday life of the 1920s on stage; they re›ected an understanding of the Weimar era as a technical age and often made use of automobiles, trains, and radios in their works.63 Weill also understood the communicative power of radio broadcasting itself as well as ‹lm. He speci‹cally designed works for the radio, including the “radio cantata” Der Lindbergh›ug and Das Berliner Requiem,64 and was in›uenced by cinema’s linear succession of “pregnant moments” in his creation of epic opera.65 Jazz as “an utterance of life”66 or “an international folk music of the broadest consequence”67 was another important feature of Weimar-era scores in keeping with the interest in everyday life—a part of the Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity). Hitler’s regime similarly utilized modern culture and technology, especially the radio, to create mass appeal. On 18 August 1933, Goebbels declared at the opening of the tenth Deutsche Funkausstellung (German radio show), “What the press was to the nineteenth century, radio will be to the twentieth.” He continued, radio will be the “chief and major mediator between the Movement and the Nation, between Idea and Man.”68 To that end, on 25 May 1933, Goebbels introduced an inexpensive radio set, the “People’s set” (Volksempfänger).69 At the twelfth Deutsche Funkausstellung, ordinary Germans were able to send over the radio short greetings (Volkssender) in praise of Hitler or their new situation in order to prove and spread loyalty to the state.70 These simple messages ‹t Hitler’s general approach to the masses. In “Die Grundelemente des Rundfunks” (Fundamentals of Broadcasting), Hans-Joachim Weinbrenner, responsible for “cultural-political” broadcasts within the party, summarized the regime’s rhetorical objectives: “The more basic the propaganda message is, the stronger will be the impression it makes on the masses, whose feelings and attitudes are of a similarly basic kind. You will not rouse the enthusiasm of the masses with scholarly talks, but by presenting them with simple, everyday illustrations that correspond with their own experience.”71 In effect, the Nazis fought Weimar-era modernity with the tools and weapons of modern culture.72

72

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

The awareness and exploitation of the power of contemporary culture to galvanize a mass audience in their own political dealings allowed regime leaders to recognize the effectiveness and potential danger of Weill’s new compositional framework. The ban on Weill in the League, however, undermines the regime’s Jew/Aryan duality. It also exposes a general Nazi system of musical valuation that privileged certain Jewish composers over others and thereby created subcategories of “bad” and “less bad” under the larger heading of Jewish music. For Nazi writers, Weill was the worst of the worst: according to Friedrich Welter, a part of the “ultimate and insolent phase” of Jewry,73 and, for Theo Stengel and Herbert Gerigk, “inseparable from the worst subversion of our art” (“untrennbar mit der schlimmsten Zersetzung unserer Kunst”).74 To justify this distinction, authors adopted what Adorno labeled the “jargon of authenticity.”75 They cited blood, race, and soul as the ultimate arbiters of culture and criticized composers, both German and Jewish, who were not rooted in their people. In a 1933 article, for example, Helmut Kötzch attacked Weill, claiming he was “without a connection to the nation, without an authentic ethos, without a future, and ultimately without meaning.”76 It is true that later in his life Weill composed music in a consciously nationalistic vein and frequently agreed to write music for Jewish organizations after World War II. He composed Kiddush for cantor, chorus, and organ for the Park Avenue Synagogue in March 1946 and, in 1948, an orchestral version of the Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. Nonetheless, before World War II, The Eternal Road was the only work that at all showed Weill’s Jewish national inclination—a side of his personality that he ignored during his many years in Berlin.77 Weill’s association with Brecht and thus Marxism further enhanced the perception that Weill’s music was distant from a national Volk. Nazi cultural leaders recognized Marxism as an internationalist, materialistic movement, without the spiritual or national tendencies that they privileged in their discussions of both German music and Jewish music.78 Not only that, Marxism was seen as a destructive force, with the power to end “culture in the sense of the total character of a people.”79 This outlook had its origins in Marx and Engels’s own pronouncements on nationalism and their view that class rather than nation was the de‹ning feature of life. Realizing that the guardians of nationalism were threatened by this stance, in the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” they wrote, “The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.” However, they continued, “The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.”80 This idea was unacceptable to the regime and endangered their nationalistic ideology.

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

73

As we have seen, the Nazis were not alone in this valuation of nationalism. It was after all an unavoidable condition of musical authenticity at the time and an enforced focus in the League. This prompts the question: Would League leaders have even programmed Weill’s music if they had been given the chance? Would they, too, have condemned his music as international, rather than “Jewish”? Based on the League’s reception of Arnold Schoenberg and Ernest Bloch, Weill never stood a chance in the League. Indeed, Schoenberg’s and Bloch’s reception had much to do with this attention to nationalism—but with very different results. Despite the composers’ connections—admiration of Wagner’s music and common inclusion in works on Jewish music—their standing in the League could not have been more different. In 1930, Schoenberg declared, “Called upon to say something about my public, I have to confess: I do not believe I have one.”81 On only seven occasions, the music of the composer, who is today considered one of the preeminent Jewish artists, was performed within the League; four of these performances featured the tonal Verklärte Nacht. This preference re›ects the more traditional leanings of the League and the Berlin public in general. Schoenberg’s modernistic output was inaccessible at the time and, as Hilda Klestadt Jonas, a former performer in the League’s Düsseldorf branch, explains, “too much of a break” with what people were accustomed.82 Still, League organizers performed their duty. On 2 September 1934, they held a performance in celebration of the composer’s sixtieth birthday. It featured Lieder selections as well as Schoenberg’s 1st String Quartet in D minor, which, like Verklärte Nacht, was early and tonal.83 Based on an article of 14 September 1934, which identi‹ed “the dif‹cult ‘Schoenberg’ problem,”84 and the traditional taste of the League public, however, one could surmise that the concert was not well attended. Of a parallel celebration in Frankfurt, Martin Goldsmith states, “Public acceptance of this inventor of the twelve-tone method of composition has never been warm or wide, and the Frankfurt audience proved to be no exception. Demonstrating that religious solidarity only goes so far, attendance at the Schoenberg Festival was light.”85 The Jewish public as a whole did not appreciate his music any more than so-called Aryan audiences did. In fact, Schoenberg himself insisted he was “far more appreciated by Aryans than by Jews.”86 This frustrated Schoenberg, who after emigration complained about the lack of performance outlets presented to him by his fellow émigrés, among others.87 Anneliese Landau was also troubled by this apathy, especially in light of Schoenberg’s reconversion to Judaism in 1933. Early in his career, Schoenberg, an Austrian, set out to advance what he conceived of as the great tradition of

74

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

German music.88 Indeed, rather than dispensing with Germany’s harmonic tradition, he believed his method of twelve-tone composition was a next logical step and would ensure “the hegemony of German music.”89 In 1931, he wrote, “My music, produced on German soil, without foreign in›uences, is a living example of an art able most affectively to oppose Latin and Slav hopes of hegemony and derived through and through from the traditions of German music.”90 However, during the years preceding the Third Reich, Schoenberg found himself increasingly estranged from the Germany he loved. In a letter of 19 April 1923 to Wassily Kandinsky, he wrote, “For I have at last learnt the lesson that has been forced upon me during this year, and I shall not ever forget it. It is that I am not a German, not a European, indeed perhaps scarcely even a human being (at least, the Europeans prefer the worst of their race to me), but I am a Jew.”91 Landau recognized Schoenberg’s isolation as a Jew and endeavored to ‹nd him a home by facilitating a conversion of taste within the Jewish Culture League. In her presentation on the Jewish art song at the Jewish Culture League Conference on 6 September 1936, she even outlined a plan to retrain the League members’ collective ears—slowly acclimating them to the new sounds.92 Landau also promoted the Jewish composer in an article in honor of his sixtieth birthday. In it, she explained that the concert listener of the world “does not understand Schoenberg any more, doesn’t bother to learn to understand him, comfortable and self-con‹dent, he simply laughs at him.”93 To effect a change of attitude, she cited Schoenberg’s accomplishments and optimistically insisted, “Today we no longer fear and deride the name Arnold Schoenberg.”94 In spite of these rescue attempts, Schoenberg remained remote from the League public, and Landau herself was later forced to console herself with Schoenberg’s acceptance as a theorist and teacher, if not as a ‹rst-rate composer.95 For some Jewish scholars and League leaders, however, it was not simply a question of taste or becoming comfortable with the new sounds. Rather, it was about authenticity. In an article published in Musical America in 1924, Lazare Saminsky, who had been part of the Society for Jewish Folk Music before immigrating to the United States, wrote, “Arnold Schoenberg with all his radicalism is a typical representative of the Western . . . Jewry, hysterical, neurotic, assimilating and accentuating idea and feelings adapted from its neighbors.”96 Similarly, Idelsohn thought Schoenberg epitomized those “composers of Jewish origin” whose music denied “the Jewish spirit; they are renegades and assimilants, and detest all Jewish cultural values.”97 Bloch himself also attacked the composer. In a letter to Albert Elkus dated 26 January 1947, he disparaged the twelve-tone technique Schoenberg pio-

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

75

neered and, at the same time, explicitly supported Wagner’s anti-Semitic ideas. He wrote, “The ‘12-tone row,’ for me, is an imposture . . . all Jews, who have used the degeneracy of our Time, to cultivate it for their pro‹t! A ‹ne heritage. . . . R. Wagner was right in his ‘Judentum’—horribly said—but true.”98 But Bloch’s problem with serialism also had to do with this issue of authenticity. Indeed, for Bloch, the intellectualism and elitism of Schoenberg’s music, among others, was at odds with the true music of the people, rooted in race.99 His pronouncements echoed many nationalistic and Nazi thinkers—all of whom relied on Herder and his idea of the Volksgeist or national body as the creative element in art: “Only that art can live which is an active manifestation of the life of the people. . . . It must have its roots deep within the soil that brings it forth.”100 Schoenberg’s detachment from racial roots in his music and thus perceived inauthenticity was unacceptable to those League leaders who endeavored to foster a sense of national community within the organization. At the Culture Leagues’ meeting on 27–28 April 1935, Friedrich Brodnitz, in charge of arranging and supervising press for the League, declared, “The Culture Leagues must make the greatest efforts to bind their members intrinsically to them.”101 Schoenberg’s music, as the Jewish press frequently concluded in these years, was “too individual and abstract” to help achieve this goal.102 Bloch, on the other hand, who lived mainly in Switzerland at this time, composed music League leaders and associates recognized as authentic, or authentically Jewish—music that could unite the League community. Although the League performed Bloch’s music in a total of eleven concerts, only four more than Schoenberg’s, their musical selections from his oeuvre were far more varied and included a total of at least twelve pieces: the Sacred Service, a string quartet, a piano trio, a setting of Psalm 22, “Landschaftsbilder” for string quartet, a piano quintet in C major, his concerto grosso on two occasions, an unspeci‹ed psalm setting and instrumental composition(s), “Herbstgedicht,” Psalm 114, and Baal Shem twice (see table 2). Further separating Bloch and Schoenberg, Nathan situated Schoenberg somewhere between Jewish music and general literature in his speech at the Jewish Culture League Conference.103 In contrast, he discussed Bloch and his “Bible experience” under the ‹rst category of af‹rmed Jewish composers, and he recommended for chamber and symphonic concerts his Israel Symphony, Trois Poèmes Juifs, Schelomo, and a string quartet (G minor or E minor). In her discussion of song, Landau similarly assigned Bloch a place among composers who create as conscious Jews.104 This categorization and emphasis on the Jewishness of Bloch’s music was also evident in performance. On 14 December 1935, Bloch’s music appeared in a

76

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

concert entitled “Jewish Music of Our Time by Bloch, Engel, Schalit, Sternberg, Krein, Milhaud, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Stutschewsky.”105 The concert, performed in several cities, was heralded as proof that Jewish music truly existed.106 In this way, Bloch’s music became representative of an authentic Jewish national music.107 To many at the time, he was thus “a Jewish composer in the most meaningful sense of the word.”108 The speci‹c factors that lent Bloch this aura of authenticity and differentiated him from Schoenberg are in part explained by Arno Nadel. As discussed in chapter 2, at the Jewish Culture League Conference, he insisted Jewish motives have an eastern ›avor.109 Saminsky helpfully linked Bloch with the authenticity of the East when he wrote, “We must count Ernest Bloch in the . . . Eastern group in spite of his being born in Switzerland. . . . As far as I remember, Mr. Bloch told me once that his father was a Russian Hebrew and that in his boy-

TABLE 2. Performances of Bloch and Schoenberg’s Music in the Berlin League Ernest Bloch 1933–34

—Avodath Hakodesh —String Quartet Psalm 22 Piano Trio

1934–35

1935–36

1936–1937

—“Landschaftsbilder” for String Quartet —Piano Quintet in C major —Concerto Grosso —Concerto Grosso —Psalm Setting —Baal Shem —Instrumental Composition(s)

Arnold Schoenberg —Verklarte Nacht —Verklarte Nacht —Verklarte Nacht —Two Piano Pieces —Schoenberg Celebration: String Quartet in D minor and Lieder

—Das Buch der hangenden Garten, op. 15

—“Herbstgedichte” and Psalm 114 —Baal Shem 1937–38 1938–39 1939–40

—Verklarte Nacht

1940–41 Note: Each dash indicates a separate concert and thus distinguishes pieces or groups of pieces based on their performance within the League.

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

77

hood he was nursed on traditional Eastern Hebrew tunes sung in the family.”110 Even though this statement is blatantly false—Bloch’s father was not a Russian Jew—it became a “fact” in Bloch’s reception history. Bloch’s music also contributed to this untruth. The League performed Bloch’s “Baal Shem” (1923), or Pictures of Chassidic Life, in January 1936 and in January 1937.111 The third part of this piece, for violin and piano, “Simchas Torah” (Festival of Rejoicing in the Law) quotes a Yiddish wedding song called “Dee Mezinke Oisgegayben” (The Youngest Daughter Married). Here and in other examples, Bloch’s use of folk song also tapped into another important strategy of authentication. As Nadel declared, authentic Jewish music was folk song.112 Schoenberg, though he did write settings of German folk song in 1929 and 1949, did not similarly associate himself with Jewish folk music and its allied authenticity. He had every opportunity to do so. Hans Nathan, music critic and speaker at the League’s conference of 1936, asked Schoenberg to contribute to his series of arrangements of Palestinian folk songs by famous composers.113 However, Schoenberg had reservations about such a “synthetic” construction of national music. In a letter to Nathan of 11 February 1938, he questioned the authenticity of the folk songs and wondered if “more or less talented amateurs can come up with [anything] more than stylistic copies or mannerisms.”114 He insisted that “arrangers who write in the style of Stravinsky” were in fact “more appropriate” for the project than he.115 In this way, Schoenberg demonstrated that he had his own ideas about authenticity. Unfortunately, they did not harmonize with the League leaders’ ideals or their vision for the Jewish organization. Still, while Bloch, in contrast, made use of the power of the folk song, he did not limit himself to such material. In certain instances, he even distanced himself from the quotation of folk music. I believe that those pages of my own in which I am at my best are those in which I am most unmistakably racial, but the racial quality is not only in folk-themes; it is in myself! If not folk-themes you might ask, then what would be the signs of Jewish music? Well, I admit that scienti‹c analysis of what constitutes the racial element in music is dif‹cult. But it would be unscienti‹c to deny the existence of such elements.116

This distancing was wise: the authenticity of Jewish folk song could not be veri‹ed without a common Jewish land and, even if it could have been, folk music often varied by region rather than nation.117 Not only that, as Schoenberg’s charge of “synthetic” implies, the conscious incorporation of Jewish folk

78

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

song or any other “Jewish material,” for that matter, threatened the illusion of self- or automatic origination associated with authenticity.118 One strategy that avoided these problems was an emphasis on an involuntary Jewish essence as the de‹ning feature of Jewish music. This idea has a long history in studies of Jewish music and was always on the periphery, if not the focus, of discussions on Jewish music at the time. It can be heard in Adler’s pronouncement, at the League’s conference, that he could “feel something” in the creations of Jews.119 Bloch also utilized this strategy. In all those compositions of mine which have been termed “Jewish” . . . I have not approached the problem from without, i.e., by employing more or less authentic melodies (borrowed from or in›uenced by other nations . . .) or more or less sacred “oriental” formulas, rhythms, or intervals. —No! I have but hearkened to an inner voice, deep, secret, insistent, burning, an instinct rather than any cold and dry reasoning process, a voice which seemed to come from far beyond, beyond myself and my parents.120

The inner voice, to which Bloch referred, emanated from, in his own words, “the venerable emotion of the race, that slumbers way down in my soul.”121 In short, Bloch explained his “Jewish music” as a product of his essence as a Jew. Making the essentialist implications of this line of thinking more pronounced, in other statements, Bloch implied that he composed “Jewish music” not by choice, but rather because he could not do otherwise. In a letter to Fleg, Bloch wrote, “It is really strange that all this comes out thus slowly, this impulse that has chosen me, who in my outer life have been a stranger to all that is Jewish.”122 Bloch’s pronouncements in this vein so thoroughly positioned him as an authentic Jewish composer, he found it dif‹cult to achieve widespread success composing anything but Jewish-oriented music—as he himself complained: “Why should I be bottled, labeled, compelled to eat kosher all my life? I have more personalities than one. I have not said my last word.”123 Bloch’s outcry stemmed from the disappointment he felt after the premiere of his piece America. Although the piece won Bloch ‹rst prize in a 1927 competition sponsored by Musical America,124 the critics could not support his desire to capture the American spirit, a spirit seen as alien to his Hebrew soul. Even his ally Olin Downes called the piece “second-class Bloch and super‹cial by the side of other works which stem equally from his own creative essence and that of his race.”125 This resistance was similar to the reception of Dvorák’s Symphony in E Minor “From the New World.” After the premiere on 15 December 1893, the critic

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

79

Henry Krehbiel concluded that despite its Indian spirit, the work was Bohemian in atmosphere: “Dr. Dvorák can no more divest himself of his nationality than the leopard change his spots.”126 Bloch’s pronouncements had such power because they distracted from the deliberate methods he used to signal Jewishness in his music—such as the inclusion of folk song—and the paradoxes within these methods. That is to say, they obscured the real material of his labor—as in phantasmagoria (a Marxist idea manipulated by Adorno to disparage Wagner).127 They thereby effectively cemented his authenticity in the Jewish organization by indexing perhaps the most effective (and dangerous) criterion of Jewish music at the time—a racial essence. It is this aspect of Bloch’s construction as an authentic Jewish composer that also earned him praise in Nazi musicology. In the Lexikon der Juden in der Musik (1940), Stengel and Gerigk recognized Bloch for attempting the founding of a national “Jewish music,” which was not based on historical-folkloristic foundations but rather on the character and spirit of his race.128 Once again, we see certain distinctions anti-Semitic authors made within the larger category of “Jewish music.” Just as Bloch, for Nazi writers, was better than many of his musical coreligionists, he was authentic for the League. Schoenberg, on the other hand, was “bad”—too intellectual according to anti-Semites at the time—which in a way also corresponded to the League’s lower opinion of the composer. In fact, the League’s conclusion, that Schoenberg’s music was simply too abstract for their organization, was similar to the art-for-art’s sake verdict with which Nazi authors condemned the composer.129 As this demonstrates, despite very different goals and motivations, there was a certain general accord between League and Nazi valuations of Schoenberg and Bloch. At the same time, in Bloch’s case, theory and practice were very different: League audiences could not rely on vague notions of a Jewish essence to recognize aurally Bloch’s national art in performance. They instead responded to clear sonic signi‹ers recognized as indicative of Jewish music at the time. To illustrate, let us examine the League’s performance of Bloch’s Hebrew Oratorio Avodath Hakodesh or Sacred Service on 25 June 1934 at the New Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse. Bloch himself declared the work to be Jewish in a letter to Anneliese Landau, dated 10 August 1946. She had expressed to him her desire to devote a concert to works inspired by his Jewish ancestry. In his response, he stated,“Indeed, Baal Shem, the Psalms, the Service represent in the best way that part of my personality.”130 The League clearly shared this opinion.

80

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany The holy Sacred Service (Avodath Hakodesh), the newest and greatest choral work by Ernest Bloch—for baritone, mixed chorus and large orchestra—was created between 1930 and 1933. . . . The texts were taken from the Bible and the traditional prayers. These texts contain everything that moves the soul of Israel, its sorrow and its joy, its hope and its con‹dence. These elevated thoughts of Jewish religiosity ‹nd their congenial musical expression in Bloch’s work. It expands here to the human, to still the greater and the higher, to the cosmic.131

Based on this work, Julian Lehmann similarly concluded in the Familienblatt that, for the ‹rst time, a recognized composer understood how “to compose truly in a Jewish manner, instead of only varying or hammering out old melodies.”132 At a performance in Hamburg on 21 April 1936 under Steinberg’s direction, the audience was even instructed to honor the religiosity of the work by wearing a head covering.133 The ‹rst emblem that ensured this reception was synagogue music. The Sacred Service, based on the Reform Jewish Union Prayerbook, published in 1922, incorporates a traditional synagogue melody, Tzur Yisroel, at the end of Part I, which Bloch designated as such in the score. The second was the Hebrew language, used throughout the work. Singer believed the “essence of a speci‹cally Jewish art” was to be found in “the feeling of home anchored in the language.”134 This idea, like so many League organizers maintained, can also be traced back to Wagner and his own meditations on Herder. Herder saw language as the de‹ning feature of a nation since it “exempli‹ed the spontaneity of the Volksgeist.”135 Along these lines, Wagner believed, without recourse to Hebrew, Jews could never create an authentic culture of their own.136 Echoing Wagner in a lecture about the Service on 16 September 1933, Bloch asserted, “Just as a plant has to go to its roots for nourishment, I, too, had to go back to my own soil for growth. I did not know the language, and I could not put sounds in music without knowing the meaning of the words, so I was compelled to learn Hebrew.”137 Several years earlier, Bloch even insisted that not French but Hebrew was his true language.138 In so doing, Bloch tapped into an important trope of authenticity in his personal statements and in the Service itself. The Service also incorporated accepted traits of the exotic Orient—a “less rational” music of the East outlined in contrast to Western music in Max Weber’s The Rational and Social Foundations of Music (1921). These features included monophony or heterophony versus Western harmony, vocal music as it grew from speech—the primitive beginnings of music—and parallel octaves,

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

81

which were “practiced by peoples on the lowest level of civilization.”139 Weber used these traits to illustrate his main thesis that Western music was more developed than the music of the East due to a rationality the Orient lacked. Rather than a distinct location, the Orient in this context points to the discourse surrounding Europe’s understanding of the East—a “surrogate and even underground self ” against which “European culture gained in strength and identity.”140 Consciously or unconsciously, some Jewish scholars adopted this view of the East, merged it with their understanding of Jewish music, and popularized the belief that Jewish music was more primitive than Western music— rooted in the glory of an ancient past. In this way, many of Weber’s less evolved musical elements corresponded to the list of musical traits Nadel published in 1923 and recited at the Jewish Culture League Conference as characteristics of Jewish music.141 Weber’s thesis also mirrored the widespread belief, proclaimed in Heinrich Berl’s Das Judentum in der Musik, that Jews stressed the melodicrhythmic features “at the inevitable expense of the German harmonic tradition.”142 In Part I of Bloch’s Sacred Service, which is divided into ‹ve parts following the liturgy, the score re›ects these popular ideas about Jewish musical development. The work begins in G mixolydian with parallel octaves announcing the cantus ‹rmus motive GACBAG on which the whole work is based. The motive resounds three bars later reiterating the rhythm of the ‹rst three notes of the piece—short, short, long—an anapestic rhythmic pattern, and initiating a section of imitative counterpoint (see example 1). The cantor enters in bar 18 (Mah Tovu) clearly in G mixolydian while the orchestra functions as accompaniment until bar 24, when the chorus enters again in G mixolydian, reintoning the cantor’s vocal line. Bloch’s use of G mixolydian and modal harmony throughout the piece is a common signal of the East in music even today, as Ralph P. Locke explains in his discussion of Orientalism in Music, Culture, and Society.143 However, Bloch’s use of mode in the opening section of Sacred Service goes beyond the Orientalist appropriation of mode. The piece remains rooted around G mixolydian until bar 46, when the key signature shifts to A, and the cantor sings in A ionian over a more traditional tonal orchestral background until bar 49 (see example 2). The modality is ambiguous, with frequent accidentals until bar 62, when the key signature changes again to C and a diatonic choral section begins (see example 3). Through this method, Bloch outlines the ‹rst three notes of the cantus ‹rmus motive on a larger scale. This logical development of the motive is very much in keeping with Western musical aesthetics, which Bloch did not abandon in his quest for a

82

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Example 1. Piano transcription of Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), bars 1–6. Excerpts based on Ernest Bloch, Avodath Hakodesch (Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1909).

Jewish sound. For League audiences and their very Western ears, this made his inclusion of “primitive” or Eastern characteristics, such as mode and parallel octaves, more palatable. In spite of the espoused ideals of League leaders, forced or otherwise, in point of fact, the League’s audiences were accustomed to the Western musical culture of Germany. They did not support many of the League organizers’ attempts to introduce authentic Jewish music. A composer had to walk a very ‹ne line within the League to be accepted as an authentic composer of Jewish music. Bloch found success with his Sacred Service, deliberately or unintentionally, by signaling its Jewishness through sonic signals accepted at the time as Jewish, without abandoning the Western harmonic tradition. The importance of this duality is evident in the program notes accompanying the Berlin premiere of the work, which highlighted both Bloch’s inclusion of traditional liturgical texts as well as Bloch’s “high compositional art” (“hohe kompositorische Kunst”) and “extraordinary contrapuntal ability” (“außerordentliches kontrapunktisches Können”).144 As Bloch indicated, his work was therefore both national and universal, a seeming paradox that Dahlhaus recognized as implicit in the agenda of national composers.145 In Part I as a whole, other signi‹ers of the work’s authentic Jewish quality signi‹cant to the League’s reception of the composition include frequent meter changes as in bars 37–40 (see example 4)—in keeping with the idea that Jewish music was less rationally organized—and recitative (beginning in bars 135 and 178), a lesser developed form of music in Weber’s hierarchy given its close connection to speech. (In Part V, beginning in bar 37, there is even a section designated “spoken voice.”) Part I concludes with the cantor’s recitative Tzur Yis-

Performing a “Jewish Repertoire”

83

Example 2. Sacred Service, bars 45–49.

roel—set in the Ahavah Rabbah mode, which is similar to the Phrygian, but with a raised third and the occasional raising of the penultimate note in the musical phrase to create an additional augmented second146—another common emblem of Jewish music and Orientalism147 (see example 5). This closing section also has frequent meter changes, melismas, orientalist orchestration with an emphasis on the reed instruments, and a series of parallel ‹fths—a violation of the rules of Western harmony—in the oboes and trumpets to end Part I. All of this was accomplished against a late-romantic Western orchestral background, similar to that of Gustav Mahler or Richard Strauss. Bloch’s national music was thus in keeping with Beckerman’s observation that “in most cases ‘national music’ consisted of a series of marked musical gestures superimposed over a neutral (i.e., German) background.”148 Though this analysis of the ‹rst section of the Sacred Service is hardly comprehensive, it draws attention to traits that, for the League, de‹ned Bloch’s work as both national and universal. Through this process, those associated with the League were generally able to agree that Bloch’s music was authentically Jewish. This point of harmony was rather remarkable. The League had an audience that generally did not want “Jewish music,” a community of thinkers who could not quite de‹ne “Jewish music,” if in fact they even believed it existed, and practical questions of survival with which to contend as time passed. But Bloch was curiously attuned to the nationalist and often essentialist thinking of the day. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a peculiar statement Bloch made about the creation of the League.

84

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Example 3. Sacred Service, bars 61–63.

I think they [the Jews] can do what they want between themselves, provided it remains “Jewish” and no “Aryans” are allowed! I heard that even they are encouraged to do “things Jewish,” and are not hampered, provided they do not mix with “Germans”—a queer situation, absolutely understandable—though I do not approve it of course!—if one reads the Chamberlain, on which all their ideas—political, religious, racial—are based.149

This understanding gave him an advantage in the League. In his music and his own self-promotion and pronouncements about his composition, Bloch was able to navigate and reconcile the contradictory ideas of Jewish authenticity at the time. First, he was able to both employ folk melodies and bene‹t from their associated authenticity, and, at the same time, distance himself from this use and questions of the spuriousness of Jewish folk song. Second, he was able to index tropes of the unconscious manifestation of race in music, while con-

Example 4. Sacred Service, bars 37–40.

Example 5. Sacred Service, bars 223–24.

86

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

sciously incorporating accepted sonic signals of Jewishness to indicate this theoretical idea in practice. And third, Bloch became linked to both the music and heritage of eastern and western Europe. His music could thus exude an aura of authenticity while remaining accessible and acceptable to the Western ears of League audiences. Bloch’s success in the League brings to light these contradictory conditions of Jewish musical authenticity. They, more than anything else, characterized Jewish music in practice at the time.

chapter four

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

up until now, we have focused on the league’s debate on Jewish music, both in theory and practice. But, in some ways, the performance of music by German composers was more complicated. The search for Jewish music gave audiences a framework for their interpretation of music by Jewish composers. Music by German composers, on the other hand, was wide open and interpreted in a variety of ways. Determined to keep the League out of German culture, Hinkel’s of‹ce also censored music of German origins more often. This did not stop League leaders. During the organization’s early years, they programmed music considered German more regularly than Jewish music, and it was more popular with audiences generally. This popularity challenged the foundation of the League as a Jewish organization. However, it is readily understandable. For the League members who regarded themselves as primarily German, German music functioned in part as a link to German culture and, for many, to the German nation as a whole. This attitude, as we have seen, was part of a much larger historical tradition of assimilation through culture. The Lied, a genre Richard Taruskin offers as answer to the question “What is German?” (Was ist deutsch?),1 held a special signi‹cance within this strategy. Popular in both the League repertoire and lecture series, German art song was familiar. As studies on the psychology of music have recognized, there is a connection between a pleasure response to music and familiarity or repeated hearings.2 There was thus an attachment to Lieder, which was further nurtured by nostalgia for the past implicit in the genre.3 More instructive, however, Lieder connected League members to Germany through language—a vital element of the German nation. In a letter to her mentor Karl Jaspers, in 1933, Hannah Arendt wrote, “For me Germany means my mother tongue, philosophy, and literature.”4 Regime 87

88

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

authorities generally shared this opinion and attempted to deny German Jews access to it as a preliminary method of excluding them from the nation. On 13 April 1933, for example, Nazi students posted a list of twelve crimes allegedly committed by Jews on university buildings and billboards throughout Germany. The ‹fth charged Jews with wrongfully writing in German, a language alleged foreign to their kind. As remedy, the students insisted that Jewish works appear only in Hebrew, or, if they must appear in German, they should be labeled as translations.5 As previously mentioned, Nazi of‹cials also encouraged the Jewish Culture League to conduct its affairs in Hebrew, rather than German. This was a dif‹cult request given that most members of the League did not know Hebrew.6 The Nazi leaders in charge, however, viewed this as insubordination, as a means of “passive resistance.” Coming closer to the truth, the New York Times explained the League’s opposition to this order as reluctance to discard the “manifold Jewish cultural values that ‹nd expression through the medium of the German language.”7 Still, the popularity of Lieder and “German music” in general is not solely explained by connecting the League’s German self-identi‹cation and traditions with the Germanness of their repertoire. Music, like people, rarely adheres to neat national distinctions. Indeed, despite the distance many felt from Jewish traditions, the signi‹cance of Lieder also relates to the belief that true Jewish music had to be vocal. This point featured prominently in the Jewish Culture League Conference (see chap. 2, this vol.). The composition contest, announced at the Conference, called for entries in the following genres: an overture for orchestra, a choral work for four-voice mixed choir with orchestra suite, a choral work for two-or-more-voice choir for school or youth groups, a cycle of Lieder for voice with piano, and a cycle of choral songs for small choir a cappella or with instruments.8 The importance of vocal music in this list is undeniable. This League value was only enhanced by the Lied’s special position in Jewish communities historically and during the Third Reich as a genre appropriate for Hauskonzerte (concerts given at home).9 During the early nineteenth century, Hauskonzerte thrived in the Berlin salons hosted by Sara Levy and Amalie Beer. These salons were centers of open sociability and egalitarianism. This tradition was exported to Vienna under the auspices of numerous Jewish ‹nancier families. The most famous of these was hosted by Fanny Arnstein, Felix Mendelssohn’s great-aunt.10 The Viennese salons allowed Jews, who enjoyed an even lower legal standing than Jews in Berlin, to create their own spheres of in›uence and cultivate their love of liter-

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

89

ature and music. However, with this change of context, salons in Vienna were necessarily different than those in Berlin. At the time, Vienna, ruled by Emperor Franz I (1792–1835) and his minister Klemens von Metternich, was permeated with spies, corruption, and deceit. Against this backdrop, Viennese salons provided a needed safe occasion for social gathering (though the gatherings were at times monitored by the city’s secret police).11 Given the similar climate of fear in Nazi Germany, it is understandable that the League turned to this tradition, which continued into the twentieth century in both Vienna and Berlin despite the rise of public concert life.12 Former member Hilda Klestadt Jonas remembers that “people felt more comfortable” during these concerts at private homes.13 Since home concerts were less of‹cial than the League’s standard offerings, a complete reconstruction of their content and frequency is impossible. Still, the League programs collected in Geschlossene Vorstellung list several Hauskonzerte featuring Lieder: in March 1934 a concert with Schubert Lieder and Schumann duets; in December 1934 a program of Schubert Lieder; Mendelssohn Lieder and duets in January 1935; Lieder by Jakob Schoenberg in February 1935; Schubert and Mahler Lieder on 13 October 1935; and a concert featuring Die schöne Müllerin in January 1937, to name a few.14 These performances represented a loophole, circumventing Hinkel’s required repertoire inspection. Henry Meyer, a former member of the League’s orchestra, recalls: “We were denied Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. We then played them in many Hauskonzerte, where we did not have to work under these limitations.”15 This allowed the League to maintain a tradition of Bach and Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann—a tradition, Landau insisted, fundamental to the next generation’s education and “self-cultivation.”16 These concerts made “a virtue out of need” as well. The League consistently dealt with a shortage of wind players and, as early as 1933, the emigration, often on short notice, of accomplished performing artists and prominent musicians.17 In a review of Marriage of Figaro, the premiere of the opera stage, Ludwig Misch identi‹ed other limitations. The Culture League had only limited means at its disposal, which came from member contributions. . . . The lack of Jewish wind players, which already had to be taken into account in the programming of orchestral concerts, became an object of mounting worry with regard to opera. The obvious necessity of limiting the choice of performers to the small circle of Jewish artists made the cobbling together of an ensemble an even greater problem than it already was.18

90

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Constraints on the League made traditional genres reserved for concerts in the home, such as Lieder, ideal. The popularity of German art song therefore had a practical basis. However, it also provides insights into cultural values that affected program selections, such as the League leaders’ high regard for the German language and vocal music. In this way, it re›ects the League’s German and Jewish identities. The Lied genre itself enhances the potential for this dual identi‹cation through the construction of multiple subjectivities—represented by the voice, piano, and composer.19 For these reasons, Lied challenged national categories in music. Not only that, song undermined even the possibility of projecting a single national identity through music within the League. But it was not only musical genres, such as Lieder, that created these layers of complexity. Ultimately, individual composers contradicted to a greater extent the process of de‹ning and choosing music based on race and nation. To illustrate, the remainder of this chapter examines the reception of Franz Schubert in the League. Schubert might at ‹rst appear an unlikely candidate for the next phase of our discussion. He is not usually considered in examinations of national controversies, and his own political dealings never reached the level of strife associated with composers like Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi, or Béla Bartók, to name a few. And yet, his prominence in the League—a highly charged nationalistic organization—makes him a necessary focus. Indeed, Schubert, a Gentile, was the most performed art-song composer in the Berlin Jewish Culture League. In many ways, his prominence is readily explainable: the League’s audiences consistently demonstrated their conservative musical tastes.20 Mahler’s and Wolf ’s Lieder were occasionally performed and, in the case of Mahler, applauded by specialists such as Anneliese Landau and Ludwig Landau.21 Still, Schubert was the standard-bearer of the German Lied tradition and would have appealed to the more conventional listening habits of the average League member. Schubert’s standing, however, becomes more complicated when compared to Robert Schumann’s. Heralded as a preeminent Lied composer, Schumann, like Schubert, was accepted by a less progressive public. Nevertheless, Schumann’s music was included in only fourteen performances, one less than Mahler’s. Schubert’s music, on the other hand, was included in over three times that. In fact, along with Beethoven, Schubert was the second most performed composer in the League. What could account for Schubert’s popularity? What distinguished him from Schumann in the eyes of League members? Schubert was an extremely proli‹c composer. He wrote approximately 630 songs, which is over ‹ve times the number of songs Robert Schumann wrote

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

91

during the period of productivity that many scholars have labeled Schumann’s “Liederjahr” (1840–41). The League’s performances of Schubert’s music, however, were not just the result of his voluminous oeuvre. Rather, the League responded to contrasting images of the two composers. Both Schubert and Schumann set to music the poetry of Heinrich Heine, forging a link between them and the icon of German-Jewish culture.22 But the commonalities end there. During the Nazi era, Schumann was heralded as a representative of the German musical tradition and, in Musikgeschichte im Umriss, Friedrich Welter deemed “prophetic” the composer’s recognition of “true German” Musikpolitik—in this way suggesting the composer pre‹gured Nazi cultural policy.23 As diagnosed by Nazi musicologist Wolfgang Boetticher, Schumann was also said to have been strongly anti-Semitic in his reviews of Meyerbeer’s music and its “annoying, grumbling, and indiscreet rhythm” as well as his use of the term Jew as “insult.”24 This picture of Schumann was hardly attractive to Jewish communities involved in the League. Schubert, in contrast, was cast as a friend to Jews, owing to the fact that several of his works, perhaps composed in reaction to his Catholic upbringing, could be considered “Jewish.” Schubert, who was brought up in a strict and religious household, participated in the Catholic Church as a choirboy.25 This orthodox upbringing may account for the many liturgical works Schubert wrote throughout his life. However, as an adult, Schubert did not subscribe to the religion of his youth, foreshadowed by his “bad” (schlecht) grade in religion at the k.k. Normalhauptschule (Imperial and Royal Training College).26 The change in attitude is evident in a letter to Schubert of 12 October 1818, in which Schubert’s freethinking brother Ignaz warned, “If you should wish to write to Papa and me at the same time, do not touch upon religious matters.”27 This admonition suggests that Schubert’s religious outlook was closer to that of Ignaz, who perhaps feared their father’s punishment. Schubert also left clues about his later religious views in his sacred music. Unwilling to pledge loyalty to the Church, Schubert always omitted “Et in unam sanctam catholicam ecclesiam” from the Credo of all his masses. He also occasionally expunged the phrase “Et expecto resurrectionem,” the only statement of belief in the resurrection of the dead.28 Furthermore, in a letter of January 1827, Schubert’s friend Ferdinand Walcher wrote out a musical incipit over the words “Credo in unum Deum!” followed by the exclamation, “Not you, I know well enough.”29 Schubert may have been attracted instead to the humanist movement. As Frank Ruppert concluded, “Franz Schubert was a Christian humanist, the product of a synthesis of messianic Judaism and the platonic vision of life as an ascent to divine perfection.”30

92

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

This unorthodoxy, whether the result of humanism or not, is evidenced in Schubert’s contribution to cantor Salomon Sulzer (1804–90) and the new Seitenstettengasse Synagogue in Vienna, inaugurated in 1826. After an unsuccessful attempt to secure a composition for the synagogue from Beethoven, Sulzer turned to Schubert. The composer, “in a remarkably generous gesture to the small community of Jews in Vienna,”31 responded in July 1828 with a setting of Psalm 92 (Tov L’Hodot or “It is good to give thanks to the Lord”) for mixed chorus and baritone solo. In 1841, the piece was published in Schir Zion, Sulzer’s collection of 122 pieces for the liturgy and 37 commissioned compositions. In 1870, Schubert’s setting of Psalm 92 was reissued together with Moses Mendelssohn’s translation “Lieblich ist’s dem Ew’gen danken.” For the original setting, Schubert had used the Hebrew text, even though German would have been acceptable to Sulzer and would not have required help in the matter of Hebrew declamation.32 The piece itself does not show characteristics commonly found in music considered Jewish.33 Rather, it is homophonic and simple harmonically, typical aspects of some of Schubert’s part-songs. It also pays homage to traditional sacred emblems: it has an overall plagal tonal scheme of I (C major, measures 1–28)–IV (F major, measures 29–70)–I (C major, measures 71–88), and, in the opening and closing sections, a solo quartet and the choir alternate antiphonally as in responsorial psalmody (see example 6). However, Schubert did make concessions to the piece’s function: the middle section, which is more complex harmonically, includes a baritone solo for the cantor, Sulzer, who must have chanted verse one and verses ten through sixteen, which Schubert did not set. In keeping with conventions of the synagogue, the piece is also a cappella. The New Madrigal Society (Neue Madrigalvereinigung), directed by Ludwig Misch, “took up the cause” (“sich . . . eingesetzt hat”) of Schubert’s Psalm 92.34 Misch, the critic and composer, formed his Madrigal Society (later known as the Jüdischer Madrigalvereinigung or Jewish Madrigal Society) under the supervision of the League, which cleared the group’s repertoire with Hinkel’s of‹ce.35 The Madrigal Society performed the work in Hebrew at League concerts in December 1934 and twice in 1936, and recorded it in Berlin on the Lukraphon label at the beginning of 1935.36 Those involved in these performances were in this way made aware of Schubert’s unusual gift to the synagogue, if they were not already familiar with the work. The piece, cited as “den für Sulzer komponierte 92. Psalm” (“the Psalm 92 composed for Sulzer”),37 also highlighted Schubert’s connection to Sulzer, whose own sacred music was included in two League events.

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

93

This emphasis was consistent with the earliest performances of Psalm 92 as well as Psalm 92’s treatment within scholarship on Jewish music. The piece was premiered at Sulzer’s synagogue in the summer of 1828. On 12 May 1904, it was ‹rst heard outside a sacred setting at an event organized in Vienna by the Society for the Collection and Preservation of Artistic and Historic Jewish Mementoes to celebrate the centenary of Sulzer’s birth. Schubert’s psalm setting opened the concert, a performance devoted solely to music in Hebrew.38 Both A. W. Binder, a musician and scholar of Jewish musical studies in New York, and Aron Marko Rothmüller, a composer at one time associated with the League, use the psalm to illustrate Schubert’s “close” friendship with Sulzer. Binder even praises Sulzer as the “‹rst recognized interpreter of the songs of Franz Schubert.”39 The music critic and author Artur Holde, active in Berlin until he emigrated to the United States in 1936, alleges that one of those who appreciated these interpretive gifts was Schubert himself. Recounting what is most likely a myth, he explains that after asking Sulzer to sing Schubert’s “Der Wanderer” three times in succession, Schubert exclaimed, “It’s only now that I understand my own music and what I felt when I set the words: ‘Ich wandere still, bin wenig froh, und immer fragt der Seufzer, wo?’”40 Could this stress on the psalm setting’s connection to Sulzer have enhanced Schubert’s overall popularity in Jewish communities? Sulzer was indeed a signi‹cant ally. During his lifetime, Sulzer served as chief cantor at the Seitenstettengasse Synagogue for forty-‹ve years. In this time, he revitalized music for the Jewish liturgy. His innovative style would in›uence the development of synagogue music for decades to follow.41 For these reasons, he was well known and generally respected in Jewish communities. No doubt Schubert’s treatment of Psalm 92 created a sympathetic image of the composer and cast him as a friend to Sulzer and, by extension, Jews in general. Such a view was maintained and expanded during the Nazi era by the conductor Fritz Busch, a prominent and early non-Jewish victim of the Nazi regime. Parochial party politics forced Busch to leave his job as the director of the State Opera in Dresden in March 1933, and he eventually emigrated.42 In March 1942, he appeared as conductor of the Three Choir Festival of New York sponsored by the Congregation Emanu-El and directed by Lazare Saminsky “in an expression of faith and principle.” Busch explained his appearance as follows. In joining my work with that of a Jewish fellow-musician, Lazare Saminsky, director of the festival, and in trying thus to help in the fostering of cultural comradeship and amity among creeds and races, I am not doing anything new: I

94

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Example 6. Bars 1–12 of the opening section of Schubert’s Psalm 92. Excerpt reproduced from Franz Schubert, “Der 92. Psalm,” in Complete Works: Breitkopf & Härtel Critical Edition of 1884–1897, vol. 12 (New York: Dover, 1995).

merely follow in the footsteps of a very great and a very lovable German musician, Franz Schubert. A hundred years ago, in another sinister period of history full of strife between creeds and nations, Schubert, German and Christian as could be, carried his high-minded friendliness so far as to compose a choral work to Hebrew words for the synagogal service of his friend, the famous cantor, Soloman

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

95

Example 6. Continued.

Sulzer of Vienna. It is published in Sulzer’s collection and is used by the Jewish people the world over as their own. This is what Schubert did. I am happy to follow his example.43

Busch here propagates the posthumous picture of the German, rather than Austrian, Schubert, friend to Sulzer and spokesman for tolerance. He also asserted that the Jewish people claimed Psalm 92 as their possession, explaining that Psalm 92 was “used by the Jewish people the world over as their own.” In this way, Busch implied a connection between Jewish music—conceived of as the cultural property of the Jewish people—and Schubert’s Psalm 92. He was not alone. In 1898, the composer and cantor Eduard Birnbaum, whose “Talmudische Rhapsodie” was performed by the League in 1935, similarly claimed Schubert in his article “Franz Schubert as a Composer of Synagogue Music.”44 Schubert’s other psalm settings shed further light on his music’s appeal within Jewish communities. He composed music for Psalms 13 (incomplete) and 23, and arranged Maximilian Stadler’s setting of Psalm 8,45 all to Moses Mendelssohn’s German translations (Berlin, 1782). Schubert’s Psalm 23 (1820), for SSAA chorus and piano, was performed by the League at Berlin’s Friedenstempel on Markgraf-Albrecht-Straße in November 1936. The psalm is one of the most popular in the Psalter. Ascribed to King David, it describes a traveler who passes through luscious pastures and past still waters until he comes to “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.”46 Here the psalm switches from third-

96

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

person references to God (He) to second-person references (Thou), addressing God directly and emphasizing that the traveler is no longer alone: “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.”47 The German-romantic theme of a lone traveler, meeting his fate and ‹nding comfort, would have appealed to Schubert, who continually visited this subject in his composition. For our purposes, however, Schubert’s use of Moses Mendelssohn’s translations is the main point of interest. Mendelssohn had hoped that his translations, which were inspired by a desire to restore the Hebrew lyric, would become popular with musicians. Nevertheless, not even his grandson, Felix Mendelssohn, made consistent use of them. Indeed, he used the translations only once in early psalm exercises of 1821.48 What is more, there is evidence that Felix refused a request from the Hamburg Temple for psalm settings with Moses’s translations, opting for the Lutheran instead.49 In light of this, why and how would Schubert have come to employ Moses’s translation? Moreover, could the use of Moses’s translation be considered another gesture of “cultural comradeship” by Jewish communities and the Jewish Culture League? Many have assumed Schubert’s Psalm 23 in Moses Mendelssohn’s German translation was intended for the synagogue or at least Jewish communities.50 But the use of Moses Mendelssohn’s German translation does not necessarily imply a connection to the synagogue. A German, rather than Latin, version was appropriate for Psalm 23’s secular destination, and Mendelssohn’s German translation was desirable as “one of the most modern translations, which is not compromised by the clash between denominations.”51 Indeed, other composers had recognized the strengths of Mendelssohn’s translations before Schubert and had set them to music. Among them, Maximilian Stadler was the most likely source of Schubert’s familiarity with these translations. Still, the fact that a Jewish connection was assumed is a signi‹cant reality within Schubert’s reception history. A ‹nal work to consider in this discussion of Schubert’s Jewish music is Mirjams Siegesgesang (Miriam’s Song of Triumph), composed in March 1828, for soprano solo and mixed chorus with piano accompaniment.52 This cantatalike work, with a text speci‹cally written for Schubert by Franz Grillparzer, describes the rejoicing of the Israelites after their deliverance from the Egyptians, accompanied by Moses’s hymn of triumph and praise (Exodus 15). Given the subject matter, this work was “Jewish” at the time. It ‹t the regime’s acceptance of Jewish music as music based on an Old Testament theme. It also has musical and thematic ties to Handel’s Israelite oratorios, which, as we will see in the fol-

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

97

lowing chapter, League leaders consistently treated as Jewish music. The League’s performance of the work at Bechstein Hall in February 1936 enhanced this perception. The composition was programmed alongside Schubert’s Psalm 92 and the Lied “Dem Unendlichen” (To the In‹nite One), to a text with religious themes by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, as well as sacred-themed works by Beethoven and vocal compositions by the Jewish composers Rosy GeigerKullmann, Cilly Zukmann-Bizony, and Gerhard Goldschlag. The work was also performed at the synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse, again with Psalm 92, among other works. While the February concert positioned Schubert as a composer of sacred music, the latter context suggested that these works could belong to a particular denomination. That is, the synagogue setting provided the proper context for appreciation of Schubert’s Mirjams Siegesgesang (and Psalm 92) as “Jewish.” Schubert of course could not have imagined the appeal of these sacred pieces to Jewish communities (or their subsequent rebirth as symbols of religious tolerance or “Jewish” works). However, reception history is the product of many, sometimes contradictory, factors that have little to do with the composer and his or her biography—often more signi‹cant in reception than the composer’s music (the result of the abstract nature of music itself).53 This is especially true in the case of Schubert reception. With few of his own letters to set the record straight, Schubert’s biography is less restrictive than those of other composers, and myriad interpretations are possible.54 Jewish communities could therefore claim Schubert for their own purposes—performing his work at the synagogue and satisfying the regime’s de‹nition of Jewish music with the works of an “Aryan” composer. Schubert’s general reception also played a role in this appropriation. The narrative posthumously ascribed to him the recurring idea of “poor Schubert” (“armer Schubert”) and rendered him an outsider or stranger. These images index a state of being with which the members of the League, who were experiencing increasing discrimination and forced estrangement, surely identi‹ed. The ‹rst myth, that of “poor Schubert”—“the unrecognized genius, the artist who valiantly struggles for acceptance and yet is inexplicably ignored by the world until after his death”55—appears again and again in the writings of Schubert’s friends, critics, and biographers from his death, 19 November 1828, on. Schubert had referred to himself as such in his earliest surviving letter. He wrote this letter to his brother in 1812 while away at school and signed it: “your loving, poor, hopeful, once again poor, and not to be forgotten brother Franz.”56 This idea was later propagated by Rudolf Hans Bartsch’s well-known

98

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

novel Schwammerl (1912), which had reached a printing of 236,000 by 1932 and had been the basis of Heinrich Berté’s operetta Das Dreimäderlhaus (1916).57 Central to Bartsch’s novel was both the relationship between Schubert and Beethoven, and the idea of Schubert as a struggling genius. However, as Alexander Stillmark noted, Bartsch gave the tribulations and deprivations of genius a positive spin by accentuating the rewards to be reaped later.58 The deprivations included the composer’s precarious ‹nancial situation, which, although often exaggerated, quite literally necessitated the adjective poor, and his early death. Memoirs, reviews, and reference works have lamented the ephemeral life of the “all too young deceased composer of genius.”59 In this vein, Oscar Bie wrote in his centennial biography Schubert, the Man: “If he had lived, he would have projected the distinction of his youth into a still riper manhood—into an indescribably fruitful future—and would have become the ‹rst and foremost of all.”60 League associates were aware of this myth and ‹xation on Schubert’s early death. In the program lea›et of October 1934, Anneliese Landau described Schubert’s composition of the “Great” C major Symphony, his last complete symphony:61 “He wrote it six months before his death, when all the still unsung Lieder had to be sung before the great, inexorable silence.”62 This dramatic description of Schubert and the symphony he never heard performed corresponds to the Romantic traits of the symphony itself, which moved beyond the spirit of the Classical period apparent in Schubert’s ‹rst six symphonies.63 The popularity of Schubert’s “Un‹nished” Symphony, performed during the League’s ‹rst season, and twice in the third season, similarly indicates a certain interest in Schubert’s later, more Romantic compositions, as well as the tragedy of his short (“Un‹nished”) life. Schubert’s economic need—another aspect of the “poor” Schubert myth—may also have been a part of this awareness. In a speech delivered in 1939, shortly after her emigration to the United States, Anneliese Landau said that “Schubert had the hard luck to live in a period of social changes.”64 He thus had to rely on his friends: “These friends—not quite as poor as Schubert, but not blessed with wealth either—gave Schubert shelter and food through many years.”65 It is dif‹cult to say whether or not Landau portrayed Schubert in such a light in her ‹rst speech to League members in 1933, which was devoted to the song composer. However, many of Landau’s speeches in English were based on or direct translations of her speeches at the League. The second myth—Schubert as outsider—is visible in Schubert iconography. In art, Antonio Baldassare observes, “It is striking how often he [Schubert]

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

99

appears on the periphery within a group of people and how explicitly he avoids any visual contact in portraits.”66 In works such as Leopold Kupelwieser’s Landpartie der Schubertianer von Atzenbrugg nach Aumühl (1820) and Charade: Gesellschaftsspiel der Schubertianer in Atzenbrugg (1821), the composer is present but never wholly accepted or included. In her speech of 1939, Landau subscribed fully to this depiction of Schubert as the outsider or “Other.” She called him “perhaps the greatest of all Romantic composers” and “the ‹rst for whom the Lindenbaum with its majestic trunk, with its spreading shade . . . became a symbol of protection against a hurting outside world.”67 In doing so, she projected Romantic tropes of protection and pain, and connected Schubert to a world beyond suffering, represented by the Lindenbaum (lime tree), the ultimate German symbol of “the innocence and security of childhood.”68 She concluded her speech with: “Schubert is beauty that never can be destroyed.”69 Landau discussed Schubert in a similar way for League audiences in 1933, explaining Romanticism as a stylistic period, but also a “worldview” (Weltanschauung) that focuses on “the relationship of the individual to the environment.”70 Schubert’s music was instrumental in the creation of this myth: in it, the popular consciousness meshes Schubert’s life with his musical subjects. One famous example of an outsider, linked to Schubert and the eternal Jew,71 is the narrator of Winterreise, a cycle of twenty-four songs composed a year before Schubert’s death. This character is portrayed as lonely and forgotten, in the third song, “Gefror’ne Thränen,” when he bemoans his unnoticed frozen tears and, in the thirteenth song, “Die Post,” where he awaits a letter—any letter— and struggles to maintain his waning hope, re›ected in the music by the alternation between major and minor. In the ‹nal piece, “Der Leiermann,” the lonely wanderer confronts his “other” self, a beggar-musician, who embodies all his fears of solitude and estrangement from the world. This cold isolation is captured in the piano accompaniment with the organ-grinder’s empty open ‹fth in the left hand functioning as a drone. According to Bellman, this drone indexes the style hongrois to signify the Gypsy, another societal outcast (see example 7).72 As in Psalm 23, the end of the journey is marked by the narrator’s switch from third person to second person in the ‹fth stanza, when the wanderer addresses the organ-grinder directly: “But he lets it all go on as go it will; / Keeps the handle ever turning, never still; / Strange old organ-grinder, shall I go with you?”73 This cycle was performed by the League in October 1934 and again on 7 April 1935. The popularity of the work is clear in a review of the 1934 performance. Jakob Schoenberg, writing for the Jüdische Rundschau, wrote, “Only the

100

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Example 7. Bars 1–8 of the later version of “Der Leiermann.” Excerpt reproduced from Franz Schubert, Complete Song Cycles: Die schöne Müllerin, Die Winterreise, Schwanengesang, ed. Eusebius Mandyczewski, with translations by Henry S. Drinker (New York: Dover, 1970. Originally published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1895).

enthusiastic devotion to the work could make possible the almost two-hour, uninterrupted rendition of ‘Winterreise’ without the slightest letting-up of the interpretive power.”74 This devotion can be credited to the appeal of the romantic outsider, who, in Schubert’s Lied, “Der Wanderer,” programmed in the League’s ‹rst and third seasons, declares, “I am a stranger everywhere” (“ich bin ein Fremdling überall”).75 In performance, Schubert’s musical rendering of this outsider allowed League members to take solace that they were not alone. This shared musical experience brought them together and established a link between them and Schubert.76 The “depth of feeling” (“Tiefe des Emp‹ndens”)77 and the “unusually intimate nature” of Schubert’s music, which Anneliese Landau ascribed to the music’s relationship to the I (Ich) rather than a group iden-

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

101

tity,78 deepened such an engagement.79 At times, Schubert and his musical depictions of loneliness and estrangement could also function as a form of catharsis by allowing League members to grieve while listening. This response to music, in Jerold Levinson’s estimation, “allows one to bleed off in a controlled manner a certain amount of harmful emotion with which one is af›icted.”80 Sad music, however, is therapeutic only for “listeners currently in the grip of unhealthy emotions, whether on a conscious or unconscious level.”81 Schubert’s music could no longer function in this way after 1938. At this time, Hinkel and his censors banned Schubert from League programs. But why 1938? Why had they not done so earlier? Beethoven had been banned two years prior, in 1936, the year Germany entered the “danger zone”—the period of mobilization during which Germany prepared for expansion toward Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.82 Already before 1936, they had censored Jewish enjoyment of Beethoven’s music, canceling subsequent performances of the League’s production of Fidelio, presented on 4 November 1934.83 Moreover, in a letter to the director of propaganda of the Berlin Spandau district, dated 19 November 1934, the Charlottenburg propaganda of‹ce had condemned as “tactless” (“taktlos”) a recent issue of the League’s monthly publication that had celebrated and discussed Beethoven and Goethe. The propaganda of‹cer complained, “What do Beethoven and Goethe have in common with the Jews?”84 Perhaps this opinion explains an order issued by Hinkel’s of‹ce banning Beethoven’s “An die ferne gliebte” (“To the distant Beloved”), a song cycle set to the verses of Alois Isidor Jeitteles, a medical student who was Jewish.85 There was no of‹cial explanation of this ban. However, generally, musical settings by German composers of texts by Jewish authors were more likely to be approved.86 While this trend did not continue in the case of “An die ferne Geliebte,” Nazi authorities allowed Schubert’s setting of not only German texts by Jewish authors but also a Hebrew text (Psalm 92). Beethoven was clearly held in higher esteem than Schubert. Within the regime’s musical politics, Beethoven was privileged as the heroic Aryan ideal and placed beside Wagner as representative of German supremacy. In fact, in July 1924, Goebbels had put him ahead of Wagner, musing, “Why always put Wagner out front as a great man? Why not Beethoven? He stood immeasurably higher as a character.”87 Nationalistic authors had propagated a völkisch image of the composer already in the Weimar era. The idea of Beethoven as a “world conqueror” was an important element of this effort, which allowed Nazi musicologists to draw parallels between Beethoven and

102

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Hitler.88 Beethoven was a great composer who could unify the folk as “artistic leader” (“künstlerischen Führer”).89 The image of Beethoven thus could serve to legitimate the Nazi Party’s political agenda by promoting Beethoven as “an artist, who, like Hitler, embodied National Socialist heroic ideals.”90 Beethoven’s prominence in the Third Reich inspired critic Walter Jacobs, writing for the Kölnische Zeitung, to recommend in 1934 that the National Socialist politicians use Beethoven’s Third Symphony as the sonic emblem—a “political symbol”— of the Third Reich.91 Although the Nazis elected Bruckner instead, Beethoven remained an important icon. His music was regularly appropriated for party rallies, festivals, ‹lms such as Request Concert which recast Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata as a march, and radio programs such as the internationally recognized “Beethoven Cycle” broadcast in January 1934 on the Deutschlandsender, the national broadcasting station.92 Furthermore, Beethoven’s music, speci‹cally the ‹nal chorus of the Ninth Symphony, was performed in the stadium at the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. On this occasion, one can assume that the universality of Schiller’s lyrics—re›ecting the atmosphere of the Olympics as an international event—was valued just as much as Beethoven’s music. But organizers saw the work foremost as a “proclamation of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft.”93 Schubert, on the other hand, represented “one of the most complicated problems of German music” (“eines der kompliziertesten Probleme der deutschen Musik”).94 In Musik und Rasse, an early comprehensive work on the supposed connection between music and race, Richard Eichenauer, a Nazi Party member with no formal musicological training, identi‹ed in Schubert’s music a “certain softening of voice leading” (“gewisse Erwichung der Linienfürung”), frequent shifts from major to minor, and harmonic weakness—which he credited to Schubert’s supposed mixed ancestry. These characteristics, for Eichenauer, distinguished Schubert’s work from the music of Beethoven.95 Linked with femininity (and homosexuality), this assessment resounds in both past and present writings on Schubert. In fact, Schumann was the ‹rst to invent the analogy of “Beethoven to Schubert as man to woman.” In his 1838 review of Schubert’s Grand Duo, Schumann had compared Schubert to Beethoven. He explained that Schubert was “a feminine character [Mädchencharakter], much more voluble, softer and broader; or a guileless child romping among giants,” conducting himself “as a wife to husband, the one giving orders, the other relying on pleas and persuasion.”96 Despite the subtleties Scott Messing identi‹es in Schumann’s critique—and in his more plastic, androgynous, understanding of the feminine in Schubert—this statement represents the beginning in a process

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

103

that has permanently ‹xed Schubert in gendered categories.97 The endurance of this view is evident in Scott Burnham’s summation of contemporary opinion. From Theodor Adorno to Carl Dahlhaus and Susan McClary, Schubert’s music is consistently characterized as non-Beeethovenian rather than as Schubertian. We can hardly begin to talk about Schubert in any other terms: Schubert is nonprocessual rather than processual; reminiscent rather than goal-oriented; the sense of self projected by his music is permeable rather than autonomous, or feminine rather than masculine, or “gay” rather than “straight.”98

During the Third Reich, this thinking was partly based on the symphonic/ melodic opposition that, according to Sanna Pederson, “barely masks the masculine/feminine opposition that underlies it.”99 In Nazi thought, this femininity would link Schubert with Germany’s Other, the Jew, whom Otto Weininger had likened to women in his infamous Sex and Character. He wrote, “It would not be dif‹cult to make a case for the view that the Jew is more saturated with femininity than the Aryan, to such an extent that the most manly Jew is more feminine than the least manly Aryan.”100 The cliché that Schubert was a typical Austrian, or even the epitome of what was considered “Viennese,” further contributed to the gendered reading of Schubert and his music at this time. On 25 November 1928, Thomas Wolfe wrote about this in a letter. This has been Schubert week—he died one hundred years ago, and the ceremonies in his honor this past week have been endless. . . . Their devotion to him is astounding—his picture is everywhere, books about him are everywhere, he has been sung, played, memorialized in churches opera, concert houses and public places all this week—and always to great crowds. I think Schubert has become a great symbol to these people, standing for all that was best and greatest in “the good old time.” He is Vienna incarnate . . . and he is rooted in their hearts forever.101

Faced with negotiating the embodiment of Vienna, Schubert reception is affected by an imagined dichotomy between the “weak Austrian” and the “manly German.”102 This distinction is evident in the writing of Max Morold (1916), later a Nazi sympathizer, who describes “softness” (“Weiche”) and naïveté as typical of music from Austria.103 Nazi reception of Bruckner’s music overcame this characterization. But he was born in Ansfelden near Linz, which may have

104

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

relieved Bruckner of the burden of “personifying” his capital city. Hitler came to despise Vienna, though he at one time admired the city, especially its Ringstraße.104 He had been rejected there several times during his student days.105 Still harboring a grudge, Hitler endeavored, once in power, to establish Linz as a counterweight to Vienna, which, according to Goebbels, was to be “gradually phased out of the picture.”106 Hitler’s position on this matter could not have enhanced Schubert’s standing in Nazi Germany or encouraged the Nazis to “protect” Schubert, as they had Beethoven, from “appropriation by Jews.” This is not to say Nazi of‹cials completely ignored Schubert. To the contrary, although he did not hold the same place of honor as Beethoven, he was generally recognized as an Aryan and an important composer of Hausmusik, or music for the home. During the 1920s and 1930s, this genre, common for centuries, gained new champions with new goals. During the interwar years, promoters of Hausmusik advanced the tradition as a means of moral reform and national regeneration.107 Nazi writers capitalized on this valuation for several reasons. First, the genre resisted certain aspects of modernity such as advanced technology, which was equated with American culture. Although the regime, for propaganda purposes, exploited many modern electronic materials, there were still purists within the Nazi Party who resisted technology and what they saw as its empty promise of progress.108 The government’s support of Hausmusik functioned to appease these purists and con‹rm the greatness of the genre’s German composers. Second, Hausmusik may have allowed the Nazis to support domestic life, nurturing the family, which, Koonz explains, the regime exalted as the “germ cell” of the nation.109 Third, there were economic reasons to support Hausmusik: the genre generated revenue for private music educators and instrument manufacturers who had suffered in the Weimar era.110 Schubert was no doubt useful to these ends and therefore valued, as the regime’s 1940 Hausmusik event, dedicated to his work, demonstrates.111 Schubert also had signi‹cance as the annexation of Austria approached. The annexation was a distinct challenge for Germany with doubts about the union on both sides. Many Germans were suspicious of Austria’s cosmopolitanism, the result of a multinational history, and wanted to unite only with Austrians of complementary belief and style, if such a group even existed. In short, they saw Austria’s culture and heritage as too irreconcilable with Germany’s to warrant unity, despite the fact that both countries shared the same language.112 The main task of resolving such concerns fell upon German historians, who endeavored to overcome the kleindeutsch historiography, which im-

“German Music,” Lieder, and the Austrian Franz Schubert

105

plied Austria’s separateness. German education also changed to accommodate the annexation, emphasizing Austria’s great men and culture as they contributed to Germany.113 This reeducation was at the heart of Bruckner’s induction, on the eve of Austria’s annexation in 1937, into Regensburg’s Valhalla, a replica of the Parthenon completed under the auspices of King Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1841 to honor Germany’s cultural masters.114 Schubert’s inclusion nine years earlier, on the hundredth anniversary of his death, lacked the political fanfare and exploitation of Bruckner’s Regensburg ceremony. However, Schubert, like Bruckner, did play a role in political strategies preceding and following the annexation of Austria. Writings about Schubert at the time re›ect German scholars’ efforts to make Schubert worthy of his membership in the German pantheon. In 1939, Richard Benz consciously or unconsciously attempted to distance Schubert from the so-called femininity of the lyrical genres by positing his Lieder as an outgrowth of absolute instrumental music. He wrote, “The Schubertian Lied is not the natural Lied of the Volk, though it carries all its magni‹cence—it is born from absolute music, from instrumental music . . .”115 The ‹lm Drei Mäderl um Schubert (1936) was also meant to “set the record straight,”116 amending Schubert’s life as presented in Dreimäderlhaus, the 1916 operetta written by Heinrich Berté, a Jew. Karl Hasse had attacked the operetta in 1934 in his “Franz Schubert” as a “commercial exploitation of falsi‹ed or distorted anecdotes.”117 Benz had simply denounced it in his Die ewigen Meister as “blasphemy” (“Blasphemie”).118 According to Benz, the speci‹c offense perpetrated by Berté was the propagation of a popular, but extremely ›awed, picture of Schubert as a sentimental Viennese whose music was inspired by the Wiener Wald and the Biedermeier movement.119 This reeducation was particularly valuable in the case of Schubert. As their actions prove, many Nazi leaders recognized and exploited the power of music as a means of uni‹cation.120 For example, when German troops marched into Yugoslavia on 8 April 1941 to rejoin those regions that had once belonged to the Reich’s province of Styria, Hitler commanded the Styrian district commissioner,“Make this land German again for me.” The commissioner responded by creating music schools that disseminated German music.121 This was to anchor the growing person in the German tradition and ensure future stability and continuity.122 Regime of‹cials recognized music’s ability to aid in the imagining of a nation, creating imagined cohesion by indexing a common past and place. Schubert was useful in this regard as a shared sonic symbol, and his music could be appropriated to participate in the construction of a Greater Germany.

106

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

The initiative taken by certain Nazis to de‹ne musical identity and in›uence musical taste was therefore complicated in the case of Schubert. But within the League, he rivaled Beethoven in signi‹cance. Several explanations, as we have seen, account for his prominence: factors within Schubert’s reception history contributed to his appeal, among them the image of Schubert as outsider or stranger, and the intimate quality of his music allowed members to turn inward during a shared musical experience. In this regard, Schubert’s popularity derived from League members’ need for re›ection and emotional release. More instructive, however, is the fact that Schubert achieved this popularity because of interconnected factors relating to his association with Jewish, German, and Austrian communities. That is to say, Hinkel’s of‹ce allowed Schubert, as an Austrian, to ›ourish longer in the League than Beethoven and Schumann, and League leaders were attracted to his music considered by most to be Jewish and/or German (that is, music of the German Lied tradition). A composer’s nationality, based on this example, did not necessarily determine the nationality of his or her art. This latter explanation signals one more challenge, beyond Nazi restrictions and the League’s internal turmoil, that undermined the League’s process of repertoire selection. Though nationality and race were to guide the League leaders’ musical programming, this criterion was hardly expedient in practice. The composers themselves—their lives, music, and reception histories—confounded the already complex discursive and performed debate about Jewish music and repertoire formation in the League. How could the League de‹ne “Jewish music” and “German music” and thus select their repertoire accordingly, when the nationality of composers could, as in the case of Schubert, concurrently represent Austrian, German, and Jewish loyalties? This complicated question undermines the very foundation of the League as an organization forced, over time, to confront a distinct national music. However, it also exposes music’s ›exibility and ›uidity in reception, which League organizers could exploit in their negotiations with Nazi personnel and in their search for an appropriate national repertoire. In the following chapter, we will see how, with Handel and Verdi, League associates did exactly that: they took advantage of the problem of national borders in music and claimed Handel and Verdi as their own. In this way, music reception—in particular how it subverts and sustains ideas of national music—was in many ways both a blessing and a curse to the musical activities of the Berlin Jewish Culture League.

chapter five

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

When I was about ten, one of our maids, with Mother’s permission, took me with her to Sunday services in a Lutheran church near our house. After a few minutes, my mind wandered agreeably once again, until suddenly I was brought up short—indeed, startled—by the choir and organ intoning a hymn that I had ‹rst heard in Temple: the words were different, but the tune was exactly the same. How could they use a Jewish melody? . . . The melody was Händel’s “Hail! The conquering hero comes” from his opera Judas Maccabeus.

growing up in nazi germany, martin o. stern experienced the ›exibility of Handel in reception. For him, Handel’s music was entangled with Judaism, but also, after this visit to Sunday services, the Lutheran Church. Nazi ideologues, however, could not tolerate this overlap. Handel was going to have to pick a side. Music was no longer a universal language, if it ever was one, but rather an aid in the struggle of race against race, nation against nation. Handel’s and Verdi’s roles in this battle are the focus of this chapter. Both composers occupied a signi‹cant position within the League’s repertoire. Like Schubert, their prominence was the result of the ambiguity of national music— an ambiguity that allowed both Nazi writers and League leaders to claim the composers for their national causes. However, there were several key differences between Schubert’s popularity in the League and that of Handel and Verdi. First, while Schubert’s music of loneliness and loss, such as Winterreise, appealed to League members as a means of controlled grieving, certain compositions by Handel and Verdi promoted visions of hope and triumph, which had a different, although equally powerful attraction within the League. Second, although Schubert was signi‹cant to the ideological agendas of both the League and the Nazis, there was a more active, even aggressive political engagement with Handel and Verdi and the nationalistic potential of their music, especially 107

108

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Handel’s oratorios, which Richard Taruskin hails as “the ‹rst great monuments in the history of European music to nationalism.”1 Handel was no stranger to this extramusical exploitation. Many of Handel’s oratorios re›ect political ideals and religious debates of his time. He also created epic stories and heroes with which his English public could identify, interpreting them as they saw ‹t.2 Handel himself operated within Britain’s political discourse; for example, the Craftsman used a whole issue to attack Walpole, King George II’s chief politician, through an attack on Handel, another servant of the king.3 After his death, Handel continued to ‹gure prominently in various political causes. The 1784 Handel Commemoration, which was held in London in late May and early June, functioned as a means of fostering British nationalism and may also have been tied to political events of the time: the American war, the constitutional crisis between George III and Parliament, and the election of 1784.4 This politicization of Handel also existed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Germany, England, and even North America. In the 1940s, for instance, the Jewish Folk Choir of Toronto performed Judas Maccabeus in Yiddish as a celebration of Jewish strength in the face of enemies both past and present.5 To a lesser extent, Verdi, who was in fact twice elected to political of‹ce,6 had also been involved in political exploitation. A popular legend maintains that the cry Viva Verdi (“Long live Verdi”) during Verdi’s lifetime was an acrostic for Viva VERDI—“Long live Vittorio Emmanuele, Re d’Italia” (Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy). Italians, however, only utilized this encryption of Verdi’s name when Italy was on the eve of uni‹cation and the cry posed no political risk.7 There is also a myth that Italians in Verdi’s time identi‹ed with the captive Jews in his opera Nabucco, and speci‹cally the chorus “Va pensiero,” as they themselves suffered under foreign domination. To honor this bond, so the myth goes, Italians spontaneously appropriated Verdi as the composer of the Risorgimento, the movement for a united and free Italy. Though scholars now challenge the spontaneity of this appropriation, the chorus, which is at the heart of Nabucco’s reception history, did over time become an expression of Italians’ longing for freedom.8 In this way, Verdi’s and especially Handel’s music was deterritorialized and reterritorialized to suit an amazing array of political needs and periods.9 It was ripe for exploitation in Nazi Germany. But this exploitation was not without challenges, especially for Nazi leaders. This was particularly true in the case of Handel. The Nazis did not of‹cially ban Handel from the League until November 1938. In the preceding months of that year, he was the only German composer

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

109

still allowed on the League stage. Before the of‹cial ban, Hinkel’s of‹ce censored League performances of Mozart, an Austrian, more severely than those of Handel. On the evening before the 1935 premiere of the League’s rendition of Mozart’s opera Cosí fan Tutte, the Reich Chamber of Culture forbade the performance “since Mozart was an Aryan and works by Aryans could not be played by Jews.”10 This protection of Mozart as an honorary German was also clear in Hinkel’s declaration: “Jews who expect to be allowed to perform the compositions of Goethe, Beethoven, or Mozart are arrogant . . .”11 Why did Nazi censors not similarly prevent Jewish appropriation of Handel? It is clear that Handel held an inferior position in Nazi musical politics during the ‹rst ‹ve years of Hitler’s reign. But what accounts for this valuation? How did the German Handel’s reputation sink lower than that of Mozart, a “foreigner” until the annexation of Austria? The former League participant Herbert Freeden gives us a clear answer: Handel “was compromised in the eyes of the Nazis by his love for England and by his Biblical themes.”12 Indeed, Handel had spent most of his life outside of Germany, in Italy, but mainly in England, where he developed a distinguished reputation as a composer of opera seria and oratorios based on Old Testament themes.13 Moreover, these oratorios portrayed the Hebrew nation in a positive light and, in some works, as heroic—totally at odds with Nazi ideologies of Aryan heroic supremacy. These “missteps” had damaged Handel’s reputation in Nazi Germany. For the keepers of Germany’s musical legacy, it did not matter that there existed practical and artistic explanations for the composer’s use of Jewish themes. In the mid–seventeenth century to the late Baroque, especially in Italy, the Old Testament, “so rich in colorful stories of Jewish history and religion,” was a primary source for oratorio texts.14 These lively stories were ideal for Handel’s oratorios because they featured “monumental characters in a monumental setting”15 and fostered the creation of “the really heroic and tragic.”16 Bach’s characters in his works based on the New Testament, a text that seemed nebulous to Handel, were rather “more middle-class than heroic”: “What we see there is sorrow, not tragedy.”17 Handel’s use of the Old Testament rather than the New Testament not only served to create a more plastic universe but, coupled with a more simple and direct musical language—when compared to Bach’s—facilitated his audiences’ ready (political) engagement with his oratorios. The use of the Old Testament also appealed to Handel’s English audiences. The English at the time were witnessing a debate between religious leaders that focused attention on the Old Testament. This debate con‹rmed the text’s place

110

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

within the Church of England and the burgeoning English oratorio tradition— a forerunner of which, the Anglican anthem, also relied for the most part on texts from the Old Testament.18 The British drew parallels between their country’s plight and that of the biblical Israelites in religious and political writing of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.19 In this light, Handel, with his oratorios, in many ways responded to market forces and English conventions. Though Handel’s Israelite oratorios troubled many sympathetic to the Nazi cause, despite the contextual explanations, the regime still never abandoned the composer. In public speeches and musicological writings, Nazi leaders scrambled to justify Handel’s “infractions,” especially in the wake of the festivities surrounding Handel’s 250th birthday, in 1935. In an address commemorating Handel’s birth, Alfred Rosenberg stated, “Handel eventually in the absence of great subjects chose stories from the Old Testament. It must have been hard on this shaper of sounds to have to receive texts out of second-rate hands, and to have a message called by names which little harmonized with the ways of his soul.”20 Eichenauer had offered a more resourceful rationalization in 1932: “Handel selected those Old Testament stories which undeniably resemble the spiritual world of Teuton heroes. This can be admitted without in any way glorifying the Old Testament.”21 In a later edition of his work, Eichenauer added the footnote: “Despite these unambiguous words, with my evidence that Handel speci‹cally selected heroic material from the Old Testament, I have been accused of trying to prove ‘a close relationship between Hebrew and Aryan spirits!!’”22 In these undeniably ironic statements, Eichenauer struggled to interpret the Hebrew nation in Handel’s oratorio texts symbolically. He was in no way alone in this effort. By 1935 all agreed that Handel’s heroic characterization of the Hebrew nation was “allegorical, representing either England (a concession to the Puritans’ habit of comparing themselves to the ‘chosen people’) or any idealized nation, conceivably even the ‘heroic ideal of struggling Nordic peoples.’”23 To rationalize Handel’s abandonment of Germany and eventual relocation to England, some nationalistic scholars cited his “German character”—a term that has romantic “elements of struggle, heroicism, masculinity, intellectual depth, passion, and didacticism.”24 These authors explained that in England, Handel struggled, and although he could have returned to Germany and gained fame and fortune, he could not abandon this noble ‹ght.25 In this form of contorted logic, Handel’s time in England was in fact exploited to prove his Germanness. These arguments may have worked in the ‹rst years of the Third Reich, and Nazi functionaries took no action against Handel’s legacy. In fact, on 19 Sep-

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

111

tember 1934, the Reich Music Chamber (henceforth RMK) issued a directive banning textual adaptations of Handel’s Israelite oratorios in response to pressure from Goebbels’s onetime rival,26 Rosenberg, and his associates. They believed the Reich could not allow the performance of the composer’s biblical oratorios in their original form. The RMK’s directive announced that “such arbitrary text alterations should be disapproved of from an artistic point of view.”27 An article from the period also reminded readers that the following comment Goebbels made before the Reichstheaterkammer (Reich Theater Chamber) in Munich about the modern Shakespeare translations could be applied to the Handel problem: “because of our sharply outlined concept of our classics, we want no literary experiments in this area, because they endanger the eternal value of the works.”28 Still, in 1934, Handel’s works were carefully analyzed given the controversy that surrounded them. In fact, Goebbels, the president of the Reich Chamber of Culture himself, thoroughly examined the choral works of Handel.29 It was then of‹cially announced that “nothing has been discovered in the texts of Handel’s works which offers ground for any objection.”30 Fritz Stein, nevertheless, sided with Rosenberg, and, in the summer of 1935, challenged the RMK’s authority with his new version of Handel’s Occasional Oratorio, renamed Fest-Oratorium.31 The projects that followed were either voluntary, or later, underwritten by state or party of‹ces. The Reichsstelle für Musikbearbeitung, an of‹ce of the Propaganda Ministry founded in 1941, commissioned Johannes Klöcking to revise the texts of Israel in Egypt (recast as Der Opfersieg bei Walstatt) and Joshua (Die Ostlandfeier). Judas Maccabeus was subject to the most reworking—a testament to the relative worth the regime and nationalistic authors in general placed on the work. Perhaps those involved in these projects recognized the value Handel’s depiction of a proud victorious people held for a country on the eve of war. With a little effort, they could simply eliminate the evidence that the victorious were originally Jewish. The NSKulturgemeinde commissioned Hermann Burte to recast Judas Maccabeus as the Held und Friedenswerk (Hero and Work of Peace), an ode to Adolf Hitler. Other revisions of the work were produced by Hermann Stephani, Ernst Wollong, and Johannes Klöcking and C. G. Harke (Der Feldherr, Freiheitsoratorium, and Wilhelmus von Nassauen, respectively).32 Not all Germans supported these rewrites.33 Nevertheless, Handel’s “Aryanization” continued into wartime. The Manchester Guardian, a remarkably clear-sighted newspaper at the time, sarcastically reported on this activity in the article “Making Handel and Bach Safe for Nazi Ears”: “The expurgation of the masterpieces of German art from Jewish contamination is reported to be

112

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

making rapid progress, all the more remarkable in a country at present engaged in a life-and-death struggle, where concentration of a nation’s entire strength on essentials is imperative.”34 The article’s caustic tone continued as it described the “shameless non-Aryanism” of Handel’s oratorios. The article wondered, however, if the oratorio “Joseph” might remain untouched by order of the Propaganda Ministry, under the control of Joseph Goebbels.35 The ministry’s speci‹c attention to Handel’s oratorios and their Aryanization grew out of the belief that the oratorio was particularly German, a perception re›ected in nineteenth-century discussions of the oratorio. In the foreword to Beiträge zur Geschichte des Oratoriums (1872), Carl Hermann Bitter described German’s supremacy in oratorio composition. In Geschichte des Oratoriums (1882), Otto Wangemann endeavored to enhance the perception of the oratorio as a German genre. He concluded that the oratorio should be cherished “as a true German-national creation.”36 This idea had to do with the oratorio’s portrayal of historical ‹gures, connecting the audience to a common past, and inclusion of chorales. Choral singing represented the feelings of the group, not the individual, and was also thought to have powers of uni‹cation.37 Both in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, people responded to choral singing in this way and valued it as a means to mend a fractured society. In the wake of World War I, communal singing with its “community-building powers” also functioned as a potent symbol of solidarity. In response to military defeat and a longing for simpler times, choral groups grew by 1931 to include as many as 2 million German citizens.38 The prominent role given to the chorus in Handel’s oratorios was suitable for this growing choral culture—a culture that continued into the Nazi era with amateur choirs and youth singing.39 Further augmenting Handel’s popularity, scholars in Nazi Germany imposed the oratorio’s perceived power to unite directly upon the person of Handel. Friedrich Herzog explained that Handel’s monumental choral style communicated the thoughts of the Volk community: “The individual personality sinks before the fate of the people.”40 Thus, Handel’s works were “never individualistic” (“nie individualistisch”) but rather achieved “connection and community building” (“verbindend und Gemeinschaft bildend”).41 Similarly, Ludwig Mayer asserted that “Handel always speaks to the community, to the Volksgemeinschaft. If we are striving today to achieve a new ideal of a Gemeinschaftsmusik, we ‹nd the model in Handel and indeed already possess [examples] in his great orchestral works and oratorios.”42 The leaders of the Jewish Culture League, forced by the Nazis to generate a cohesive Jewish community, also recognized and harnessed the community-

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

113

building power of the oratorio genre and Handel’s oratorios above all. Handel’s standing in the League must also be linked to general interest in his music during the Third Reich—a sign of continuity between the accepted Aryan population and Jewish audiences. But, in a kind of tug-of-war with the regime, the League’s leaders exercised their own appropriation of his music and made use of its nationalistic potential to serve their own ends. Until late in 1938, the League had ample opportunity to do so given the regime’s ambiguous relationship to the composer and their stipulations regarding acceptable music for the League. The League wasted no time, performing Handel’s music on 22 May 1933, at the League’s ‹rst unof‹cial concert.43 A string of oratorios, mostly performed at the synagogue, soon followed—Samson, Belshazzar, Israel in Egypt, Joshua, Saul—starting with Judas Maccabeus. These works dominated the League’s regular presentation of oratorio (see table 3). The League’s engagement with each of these Handelian works is noteworthy. However, the League’s performance of Judas Maccabeus, celebrated as one of the season’s high points, received great attention within the Jewish press and offers the most critical insight into the League’s appropriation of Handel. The League’s enthusiasm for this particular work, the ‹rst oratorio by Handel performed in the League, also continued even after the ban on Handel’s music. From fall 1939 into the early weeks of 1940, the League director Berthold Sander and his amateur chorus dared to rehearse for a second performance of the work.44 On 23 January 1940, however, rehearsals were canceled.45 When rehearsals resumed on 17 February 1940, there was no mention of Handel’s oratorio, and, at the concert on 31 March, Sander and his choir instead performed Mendelssohn’s setting of Psalm 95 and the symphony-cantata Lobgesang, which they had already performed on 30 August 1939.46 Though Hinkel’s censors somehow overlooked two performances of Handel’s Concerto Grosso in D major during this season, the sudden change in program suggests that they followed protocol in this case by cutting short the League’s second engagement with Judas Maccabeus. Still, the attempt to mount Handel’s Judas Maccabeus at this late date underscores the impact of the early performance on the League and its solidi‹cation of an enduring bond between the oratorio and Jewish audiences in Nazi Germany. The ‹rst production of Judas Maccabeus, directed by Kurt Singer, took place on 7 and 8 May 1934, in honor of Handel’s 250th birthday, with an array of 350 singers and instrumentalists, including the opera chorus of the Culture League and two amateur choruses: the Jewish Choir Association under the direction of Leo Kopf and Singer’s Berlin Doctors’ Chorus (see ‹g. 7).47 Critics uniformly

114

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

lauded the performance. Hans Nathan, for one, commended several of the soloists and the collected choruses for their “glorious harmony: monumental, shining, while still skillful and clear.”48 He also praised the choice of Judas Maccabeus—dedicated to William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, who was a national hero in Handel’s time:49 “It was a fortunate idea to have chosen Handel’s Judas Maccabeus: the apotheosis of Jewish heroism, the freedom song of Israel.”50 The work enjoyed such success for several reasons. First, there was the plot. Thomas Morell, the classical scholar, wrote the text based on parts of the two books of Maccabees in addition to other sources. The story focuses on the struggle of the Jews, led by the Maccabee family, against the TABLE 3. Oratorio performances in the Jewish Culture League, Berlin 1933–34

1934–35

1935–36

1936–37

1937–38

Mendelssohn’s Elijah (performed at the Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

Hugo Adler’s Balak and Bilam (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

Ferdinand Hiller’s Die Zertstörung Jerusalems (?)

Jacob Weinberg’s Freitagabend-Liturgie (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

Oskar Guttmann’s Schöpfungshymnus B’reschith (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

Handel’s Judas Maccabeus (Philharmonie on Bernburgerstrasse)

Handel’s Samson (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

Max Ettinger’s Das Lied von Moses (Bach-Saal)

Handel’s Israel in Egypt (Bach-Saal, Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

Leo Kopf ’s FreitagAbend-Liturgie (Synagogue on Prinzregentenstrasse)

Heinrich Schalit’s Eine FreitagabendLiturgie (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

Handel’s Belshazzar (Philharmonie)

Mendelssohn’s Elijah (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

Handel’s Joshua (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstasse)

Ernest Bloch’s Avodas Hakodesh (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse) Zoltan Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse) Enrico Bossi’s Schir haschirim (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

Handel’s Saul (Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse)

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 7. League program for Judas Maccabeus. Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

116

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Syrians. It begins as the Israelites mourn the death of their leader Mattathias, father of Simon and Judas. Simon, the new political leader, heralds the coming of a new military leader, Judas, under whose direction the Israelites battle victoriously. Soon, however, Judas’s army must face Antiochus, the Syrian leader. Judas again wins, and the third act celebrates his victory.51 Central to this story are the themes of freedom of worship, national unity, and religious identity, which took on new relevance as they resonated with concerns within the League community. Second, the work met League members’ emotional needs, as Gerhard Goldschlag noted when reporting on the performance for the Jewish press. Is there in all of music literature a counterpart to that symbol of upright pride, to that concise, willful “Noch niemals beugten wir das Knie,” which concludes the second part, or the devastating elegy “Du sinkst, ach armes Israel” from which the eternal breath of the grandeur of Old Testament fate appears to be wafting up? And above all the most popular piece of the score, the chorus “Seht, er kommt,” which Handel later borrowed from his “Joshua,” with its grandiose buildup from the shy piano of the praising youth to the infectious jubilation of the crowds of people!52

With Goldschlag’s words, “everything to be said about the signi‹cance of the oratorio for the Jews of the time had been said.”53 Indeed, each of the excerpts Goldschlag highlighted in his review captured aspects of the League’s emotional attraction to the work. The solo and chorus from Part II of the oratorio “Ah! Wretched, wretched Israel” (Du sinkst, ach armes Israel), set in C minor, mirrored the despair League members felt in their newfound isolation and was, like Winterreise, a form of consolation. To capture the sadness of the words, Handel constructed evocative descending lines in the opening accompaniment and the initial soprano line, highlighting the text “Ah! Wretched” and the text “how low” in bars 18–19, 20–21, 27–28, and 29–30 (see example 8).54 In the duo and chorus “We never will bow down” (Noch niemals beugten wir das Knie), also in C minor, which closes Part II, the upbeat tempo and texted ostinato in the ›owing vocal lines captured the proud spirit of a people struggling to persevere in the face of adversity (see example 9). The League was founded on this resolve to continue making music despite the obstacles the Nazis placed in their path. The reward for such fortitude emerged in the popular chorus “See, the conqu’ring hero comes!” (Seht, er kommt) (see example 10). The triumph apparent in this excerpt, with horn, and in its ‹nal reiteration, timpani, oboe, vi-

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

117

olin, viola, and transverse ›ute, created a powerful vision of hope. This spirit resonated throughout the League performance, and the stirring chorus was encored after thunderous applause.55 An article about the performance of the oratorio ties its success speci‹cally to the work’s message of hope evident in the chorus. Handel’s music in his great oratorio on the defeat, despair, hope, and redemption of the biblical people was never so living, so gripping, and so uplifting as it

Example 8. The ‹nal note of bars 13–21 of “Ah! Wretched, wretched Israel!” Excerpts reproduced from George Frideric Handel, Judas Maccabaeus, libretto by Thomas Morell (New York: G. Schirmer, [n.d.]).

Example 9. Bars 1–4 of the chorus “We never will bow down.”

118

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Example 10. Bars 1–4 of the full chorus “See, the conqu’ring hero comes!”

was this time. Not only because the Jewish people and their history are the agents in this work, but because, by means of our past, [our] con‹dence in the future is proclaimed in a way that captivates the ear and the heart of every listener.56

Thus, audiences and critics responded to Judas Maccabeus’s topicality—its bearing on their present—and interpreted it as a harbinger of future stability. Topical interpretations such as this one were not uncommon in the League public. In fact, after Autolycus’s line in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale “I see this is the time when the unjust man doth thrive,” the audience erupted in spontaneous applause similar to that which followed “See, the conqu’ring hero comes!”57 Still, the ‹nal and perhaps most signi‹cant factor in the success of Judas Maccabeus was its basis in the Old Testament. Singer, himself, at the close of the

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

119

Jewish Culture League Conference called attention to the biblical foundations of Handel’s oratorios and explained that the composer “dedicated half of his life to Jewish history.”58 The program notes for the League’s performance of Judas Maccabeus and reviews in the press provide clues about the speci‹c appeal of Handel’s use of this subject matter. Hans Nathan portrayed Handel’s reliance on Jewish stories from the Bible as a symbolic gesture of tolerance, citing his oratorios as proof that this “German master” (“deutscher Meister”), looked on by all with respect, had “a fondness for the history of the Jewish people.”59 Rudolph Kastner tied this use directly to the situation of Jews at the time. The fact that he uses the themes and ‹gures of the Old Testament again and again and glori‹es them is among the most eternal, inextinguishable honors, which a great spirit in world history, as well as a German man and a German heart, could ever show to the Jewish people. To keep this honor in mind today, to refer to it with pride and modesty at the same time, appears a special necessity on the occasion of the present performance.60

Kastner depicted Handel as a model German, a testament perhaps to the fact that not all Germans were Nazis, and a sign of hope: as long as there were still good Germans like Handel, there was still a future for Jews in Germany. He also viewed Handel’s reliance on Jewish stories from the Bible with pride—as a badge of honor with particular meaning given the current political climate— and primed League audiences to do the same. Through their writing, Kastner and Nathan both exploited Handel to demonstrate the high value of the Jewish people. That is to say, they inferred from Handel’s use of Jewish biblical stories that the composer admired Jewish history and the Jewish people. Although Handel’s use of this biblical material was signi‹cant to League leaders in and of itself, uniting audiences through the retelling of a shared history, Nathan and Kastner took this engagement a step farther. Like Nazi authors, they fully exploited Handel’s Israelite oratorios by politicizing the composer as a spokesman for their cause. They also overlooked the original context of Handel’s use of the Old Testament, instead responding to it based on their own values and political agendas. Kastner, for one, also made use of Handel’s controversial time abroad. Surveying this immeasurably rich life from the most cursory bird’s eye view, we see these human civilizations in his biography, uprooted from its ur-German,

120

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany Thuringian soil, drawing power and nourishment from southerly Italian and Nordic British environments—and we nevertheless know that, despite all amalgamation, he could never give up his gruff, yet heartfelt Germanness.61

Kastner curiously supported a reading analogous to the Nazi narrative, describing how Handel maintained his true German character in spite of his relocations to both Italy and Britain. In Kastner’s rendition of Handel’s life, however, Handel was an example for the Jewish people, who like Handel, had been “uprooted” in their own proud Germany. In this context, being a Jew was synonymous with being a good German. Nonetheless, just as Handel naturally retained his national essence, so too would the Jews. In this way, Kastner colored Handel’s life to conform to Jewish interests. He also maintained the Nazi twist on Handel’s time abroad to support an alternative Jewish narrative that celebrated Jews’ involvement in German culture as well as the preservation of their Jewishness. Given all that was at stake in this nationalistic struggle, it may come as no surprise that the League also challenged the Nazi appropriation of Handel’s works as Aryan with their own treatment of his music as Jewish. In a letter to Oskar Guttmann, dated 11 July 1938, Singer, for example, categorized Handel’s oratorios as Jewish when he responded to Guttmann’s criticism that the League neglected Jewish music in the ‹rst issue of Musica Hebraica. He reminded Guttmann that the League had performed plenty of Jewish music in its ‹veyear existence. There were about ‹fty concerts in the Jüdischer Kulturbund of Berlin by the Sanders Chorus that celebrated Palestinian and Jewish music from Brandmann, Rothmüller, Chajes, Engel, Schoenberg, and Gladstein, that I commissioned three works with music for the theatre by living Jewish musicians, that there were performances of the complete incidental music for Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the most important symphonies and overtures by Mendelssohn, that the Verklärte Nacht [Trans‹gured Night] by Arnold Schoenberg was performed, and that ‹nally each year witnesses performances of one or two biblical oratorios from Handel.62

Even outside the League, there were Jewish scholars who categorized his music as Jewish in the 1930s. In a letter dated 10 March 1937, Max Ettinger explained the appropriate aesthetic stance for the World Center of Jewish Music in Palestine to assume regarding works by both Jewish and non-Jewish composers:

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

121

“Strictly speaking, music by Jews can be valuable and signi‹cant without necessarily being Jewish. Accordingly, Handel is the most obvious example of a non-Jew whose compositions contain a great deal of Jewish material.”63 Handel’s oratorios were most frequently mentioned in this regard, especially Judas Maccabeus and Israel in Egypt,64 which was ‹rst performed by the League on 7 January 1937, and, due to its popularity, subsequently encored on several occasions (see ‹g. 8).65 In March 1938, the League’s Newsletter, which often included recommendations for appropriate music to accompany Jewish holidays, even suggested Handel’s Israel in Egypt as an appropriate work for Passover (Pessach in Hebrew), a holiday historically related to the Jewish exodus from Egypt.66 This treatment of Handel’s oratorios as Jewish may also have been in›uenced by Handel’s recognized connection to the synagogue at the time. As Martin O. Stern makes clear, Handel’s music was present in the synagogue during the Third Reich. As late as 1961, a number of European congregations intoned portions of the Hallel prayer to the strains of “See, the conqu’ring hero comes” on Passover, a ‹tting gesture given the chorus and the holiday’s

Fig. 8. Kurt Singer conducting the 1937 performance of Israel in Egypt. Photograph from Bildarchiv Pisarek / akg-images.

122

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

comparable celebration of freedom.67 Even today, the melody of Handel’s popular chorus serves as the basis of a Hanukkah song, according to an article entitled “Getting a Handel on Hanukkah.”68 During the Third Reich, Antoine Lilienfeld-Lewenz further maintained that Handel’s music had a “strong in›uence” (“starken Ein›uß”) on synagogue song in general.69 Certainly this association with the synagogue and appropriation of Handel’s oratorios as Jewish increased Handel’s popularity in the League and de‹ed regime leaders’ own attempts to restore the composer to his rightful place in the German pantheon of musical masters. It also represented, for some, a quick ‹x to the problem of Jewish music and the pressing search for a Jewish repertoire in Nazi Germany. In this respect, the League performed Handel’s works not out of “necessity” or lack of viable options,70 but out of a desire to align themselves with a powerful representative of their national art. This alliance shares many features of the League’s appropriation of Verdi. Though at ‹rst glance Verdi and Handel appear to be very different composers—distinguished by both period and nationality—the League’s similar treatment of the composers represents a striking link between the two. This link offers important insights into the League and Nazi context, the League community’s use of music by non-Jews for nationalistic ends, as well as the speci‹c factors that inspired active political engagement with these composers in the Nazi period. This latter consideration can also be applied more broadly to questions of musical politics: What makes music political? Can all music be politically exploited, or are certain elements necessary for its politicization? As the following shows, there were certain biographical themes, posthumous trends, and compositional elements that provided the raw material for political engagement with Verdi and Handel. To start, Verdi, like Handel, was part of a revival movement in the 1920s. During the “golden twenties,” German intellectuals, such as Franz Werfel, who wrote a beloved novel about the composer, discovered “the dramatic qualities of Verdi’s music.”71 Musicians took notice and initiated what has now become known as the “Verdi Renaissance.” Gundula Kreuzer links this Verdi movement to the “Handel Renaissance” of the same period.72 This revival represented a reaction against modernism and a nostalgia for the past Verdi himself called for when he wrote, “Torniamo all’antico: sarà un progresso” (“Let’s return to the past: that will be progress”).73 Critics, such as Alfred Heuß, saw this promotion of Verdi as a return to the melodic principle and answer to the opera crisis of the time. In the late 1920s, state and local ‹nancial support of opera was dwindling,

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

123

and modern composers were turning away from the genre and its association with Richard Wagner. In numerous articles written in Berlin in 1931 and 1932, Kurt Weill, however, insisted opera was more necessary than ever before. He dedicated his creative energies to the establishment of “a form of theater which projects the great, leading ideas of the time onto simple, typical processes.”74 Some years later, Weill tied this development to the Verdi Renaissance: “The in›uence of this Verdi revival on composers of the post-war period was parallel to the insight that opera has to regain its closeness to theatre and therefore has to return to a simpli‹ed, clear, unmediated musical language.”75 Traits of Verdi’s music—simplicity and pureness—were grafted onto Verdi the man as well, amplifying his appeal. Verdi’s father came from a line of small farmers and tavern keepers that had lived in the village of Sant’Agata since at least the 1500s. Verdi maintained land and was an enterprising farmer all his life.76 In 1922, Adolf Weissmann, music critic and early German biographer of Verdi, emphasized these peasant roots and allied “sincerity”—a word with implied moral judgment about a person’s authenticity.77 He wrote, “Verdi, the farmer, distant from the ideal of bourgeois Bildung, has the most complete inner truthfulness: sincerity.”78 Isaiah Berlin drew on this connection between the peasant and the authentic in his essay “The Naiveté of Verdi”: “Peasants are an ancient and universal social class, and if it is this that worked in Verdi, it is not irrelevant to what Rousseau and Schiller meant by relatively uncorrupted relationship with nature.”79 By connecting peasants to an unmediated association with nature, Berlin suggested Rousseau’s own positive conception of the noble savage, a mythical being beyond the reach of civilization’s contaminating vices and thus pure or authentic.80 Such a conception of Verdi corresponded to Nazi values and adulation of Bruckner and his alleged peasant roots.81 With this connection to the peasant as well as Bruckner—highlighted in fact in 1932 by Adolf Raskin82—Verdi was poised for party support and even popularity in the Third Reich. Revivals of his operas, which began in the 1920s, continued after Hitler’s takeover. Verdi eventually became one of the most popular operatic composers of the era, even surpassing Wagner as the most performed operatic composer in the 1939–40 season.83 In addition to traits highlighted in the 1920s, such as his peasant roots and the simplicity of his melodies, in the Nazi period musicologists and critics portrayed Verdi as a fervent nationalist, who devoted himself ‹rst and foremost to his country. Some critics took this stylization a step further. They claimed that Verdi endeavored “to defend the special mission of his race against the onslaught of foreign and inappropriate elements” and was thus

124

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

“the ‹rst National Socialist among the artists.”84 With an emphasis on Verdi’s “blue eyes” and “seriousness,” scholars contributed to Verdi’s near appropriation as a Nazi with proof of his Germanness.85 And yet, Verdi, a foreigner, was hardly the ideal candidate for Aryanization, as the frustrated composer Hans P‹tzner would have surely agreed. In May 1933, P‹tzner complained “Why a Verdi renaissance, anyway—why in the world not a German opera renaissance?”86 Though he had his own reasons for voicing such an objection, P‹tzner had a point. Most composers whom Nazi writers refashioned and politicized were German or Austrian. Why did authors expend this effort on the Italian Verdi? Though certain elements in Verdi’s biography were ripe for political exploitation, Kreuzer wonders if part of the effort to refashion Verdi betrays “attempts to make a virtue out of necessity.”87 Verdi’s popularity rested with the masses and was not just the work of the Nazi Party. With no grounds to ban the composer, the Nazis could at least induct Verdi into the fold, by not only playing up his strengths but also downplaying and even erasing his weaknesses. One weakness was the Jewish Werfel’s version of Verdi’s La forza del destino, which the Nazis quickly prohibited.88 In the two monographs on the composer from the period, nationalistic authors also took pains to distance Verdi from his use of Old Testament references in his opera Nabucco, much as they had with many of Handel’s oratorios. In Giuseppe Verdi (1932), Herbert Gerigk simply wrote that the story “is a free-formed biblical subject,”89 ignoring the speci‹c source. He instead stressed the work’s signi‹cance for the Italian people and Verdi’s import, which paralleled the standing of another composer, who, as Gerigk highlighted with an exclamation point, was also born in 1813: Richard Wagner!90 Julius Kapp, the dramaturge of the Staatsoper Berlin, however, could not see past Nabucco’s Jewish setting. As others had with Judas Maccabeus, he reworked the opera to correspond to Nazi ideals. In the new version, which premiered in Kassel in January 1940, the plot focused on Nebuchadnezzar’s struggle with Memphis in 568 BCE, rather than his capture of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, and Egyptians replaced the Hebrews of Verdi’s original.91 Alongside these efforts to refashion Verdi and his Nabucco, the Nazis co-opted Verdi for foreign policy. In the conclusion of his Verdi monograph, Gerigk underscored Verdi’s national worth by quoting a 1932 speech given by Mussolini in Rome.92 In effect, he exploited Verdi to strengthen the Nazi Party’s link to the Fascist movement in Italy and its “Leader” (Duce) Mussolini, who had in›uenced and inspired the Nazi movement in several ways before Hitler’s takeover.93 Hoping the work

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

125

would maintain and deepen the “relationship between the two peoples of the South and North,” a second monograph on Verdi by the Frankfurt journalist Karl Holl, written in 1939, three years after the of‹cial establishment of the Fascist Axis, likewise exploited Verdi to strengthen political ties.94 This appropriation of Verdi was consistent with other tactics the regime’s cultural leaders utilized to appease Germany’s political allies through music, especially in Italy. For example, from 1937 onward, several German opera houses included contemporary Italian operas in their repertoire; German operatic companies regularly visited Italian opera houses; and Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten was performed in Rome in honor of Hitler’s birthday in April 1938.95 Despite Verdi’s political value, however, he was still a foreigner, and thus Hinkel’s of‹ce permitted the League to perform his music throughout its tenure. League organizers consistently took advantage of this allowance. In the League’s ‹fth year, they increasingly programmed Verdi’s music in part to ‹ll the gap created by the ‹nal Nazi proscriptions. The repertoire included excerpts from his operas as well as full productions of Nabucco (4 April 1935), Ein Maskenball (4 October 1936), Rigoletto (1 October 1938), and La Traviata (4 March 1939). Audiences responded positively: “The completely sold out Culture League hall showed what force of attraction the Culture League’s announced Verdi Opera Evening had on our Jewish public even in the summertime. And the tumultuous applause that the presentations received proved that their expectations were not disappointed.”96 Verdi’s popularity paralleled his fame under Nazi auspices and grew out of the attention the composer received in the 1920s. Just as music critics in the 1920s stressed Verdi’s simplicity and melodic gift, H. Freyhan in a review of the League’s performance of Rigoletto praised the “magic of the pure musician” (“Zauber des bloen Musikers”) and the “power” of melody.97 Jakob Schoenberg, a composer himself, directed his comments about Rigoletto to his contemporaries, who objected to “the apparent simple choruses.”98 J. Schoenberg explained that these choruses are in fact the “element of genius” (“Spuren des Genius”) in Rigoletto.99 Verdi’s communication of primary human passions in his operas also provided a basis for League audiences’ personal engagement with his work. Goldsmith explains that during the League’s 1939 season, his father Günther empathized with the sadness expressed in Verdi’s La Traviata and especially enjoyed Violetta’s “Sempre libra” in the opening act, in which she declares her freedom and delight in life. Attempting to do the same, Günther identi‹ed with “her determination to live and love fully amid dif‹cult circumstances.”100

126

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Verdi’s operas, for some, readily encourage such a response. Along these lines, Isaiah Berlin, for one, concludes that it is necessary to know many Romantic composers’ aesthetic or theoretical outlooks to appreciate their music. However, like Shakespeare, virtually all that is required to understand Verdi is knowledge of basic human emotions.101 The power of La Traviata within the League should also be credited to the comfort of “trusted melodies” (“vertrauten Melodien”) learned in childhood.102 Of all Verdi’s operas, however, Nabucco generated the most interest in Jewish communities during the Third Reich. Indeed, excerpts from the work, especially the Hebrew slaves’ chorus “Va pensiero, sull’ali dorate,” the hymn of the Italian liberation, appeared in the League’s third, sixth, and ‹nal years. Though the work had been produced in Mannheim on 25 October 1928 and in Magdeburg on 28 October 1931, the Jewish press insisted the work was generally unknown in Germany and thereby ascribed great signi‹cance to the League’s full performance of the work on 4 April 1935.103 Performed under Joseph Rosenstock’s direction, this performance inspired much enthusiasm within the League audience, as Singer noted in his report to League representatives of 14 June 1935.104 This response relates to the League’s reception of Handel’s Judas Maccabeus and the oratorio genre in general. Nabucco’s libretto, by Temistocle Solera, was based on references within the Old Testament to Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler, and his occupation of Jerusalem, although the librettist added other characters to create a coherent plot.105 As in descriptions of Handel’s Judas Maccabeus from the period, League scholars were quick to point out Verdi’s use of the Old Testament and the work’s “Jewish content” (“jüdische Stoff ”).106 Singer emphasized this content in his staging of the work, with pseudohistorical costumes and props by Heinz Condell, including tablets bearing the Ten Commandments (indicated by Hebrew ciphers) in the third act (see ‹g. 9).107 With this employment of not only the Bible, but the Old Testament, Verdi crossed genres and indexed Handel’s oratorio style, which, for its part, shared characteristics of opera.108 Freyhan recognized this overlap but insisted, “Nabucco is—in spite of many content parallels—not an oratorio in the Handelian sense, but rather an opera.”109 Freyhan’s verdict was important. As discussed in chapter 2, the League had struggled to identify Jewish opera. Nabucco corresponded to the de‹nition of convenience that categorized Jewish music based on content alone and was thus the ‹rst opera performed by the League that represented or pointed toward Jewish opera. Verdi’s model for this unusual hybrid was Rossini’s Mosé in Egitto, or

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

127

more speci‹cally the second version of Rossini’s Mosé, which Singer suggested the League perform following the success of Nabucco.110 Although a precedent may have been the Italian sacred opera,111 Rossini’s work, termed by some an “opera-oratorio,” was “new, perhaps revolutionary.”112 In addition to Verdi’s genre hybridization and use of biblical subject matter, the story of Nabucco, which includes the captivity of the Jews and their return to their own land, appealed to the League. It created a vision of triumph that League audiences had already responded to with the performance of Handel’s Judas Maccabeus. League associates, such as Hans Nathan, who had also been a key player in Handel’s appropriation, also emphasized the story’s signi‹cance to the Italian people of Verdi’s time with their “growing national consciousness” (“erwachsende Nationalbewußtsein”).113 This fact attracted those in the League in›uenced by the aggressive nationalism of the time. In the program accompanying the 1935 performance of the opera, the chorus “Va pensiero” was once again the focal point of this nationalistic attention and heralded as the highpoint of the work.114 The chorus’s text is worth citing in full.

Fig. 9. Scene from the League’s production of Nabucco. Photograph from Bildarchiv Pisarek / akg-images.

128

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany Va pensiero sull’ali dorate Va ti posa sui clivi, sui colli Ove olezzano libere e molli L’aure dolci der suolo natal!

Fly, thought, on wings of gold, go, settle on the slopes and the hills, where the sweet airs of our native land, free and gentle, waft fragrantly.

Del Giordano le rive salute, Die Sïonne le torri atterrate . . . Oh mia patria sì bella e perduta! Oh membranza sì cara e fatal!

Greet the banks of the Jordan and Zion’s toppled towers . . . Oh, my country, so lovely and distant! Oh, fond and painful memory!

Arpa d’or dei fatidici vati Perchè muta dal salice pendi? Le memorie nel petto raccendi, Ci favella del tempo che fu! . . .

Golden harp of the prophetic bards, why hang mute on the willow? Rekindle the memories in our breast, tell us of times past! . . .

The chorus’s lack of speci‹city (with little existing information about its genesis or Verdi’s intentions), biblical basis, and mood of nostalgia made it a prime candidate for League appropriation.115 League associates did not overlook this opportunity: they prepared audiences to recognize their own situation in the excerpt. Breaking down all barriers to this identi‹cation, League audiences heard Nabucco in a German translation by Leo Schottlaender,116 and the Jüdische Rundschau printed the German translation of the text of the chorus with an accompanying description of the work’s “deep religiosity” (“tiefe Religosität”) and “glowing patriotism” (“glühende Vaterlandsliebe”).117 The text, however, was not the sole factor of signi‹cance. Just as with Handel’s oratorios, the choral genre was an important part of Nabucco’s success and the popularity of “Va pensiero” in the League. Choruses in general ‹gure prominently in Verdi’s operas and, like Handel’s choruses, do not function merely as decoration. Rather, they play signi‹cant dramatic roles.118 Through unison singing, “Va pensiero” (see example 11) represented the Jewish people as a single voice, which again was a potent symbol for the League as an organization striving for a sense of national community. The actions of the character Fenena, the younger daughter of Nabucco, who chooses to die with the Israelites after they are sentenced to death, further supported this sense of unity. In a review of the performance, Nathan highlighted this important moment in the work and quoted Fenena’s line—“I want to die with them as a Jew”—in order to emphasize the feeling of “mass fate” (“Massenschicksal”) the work created.119 In this way, as with Handel’s oratorios, the League used Verdi’s opera based on their common history to unite Jewish people and foster the creation of a

Handel, Verdi, and National Pride

129

Example 11. Vocal parts in bars 1–6 of “Va Pensiero.” Excerpt reproduced from Giuseppe Verdi, Nebucodonoser, libretto by Temistocle Solera, ed. Roger Parker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

separate nation within Nazi Germany. As we have seen, Handel’s and Verdi’s choruses were vital to this project, as was the depth of tragedy and height of joy in their works. The League also responded to several temporal and communal layers in their experience of these works. In doing so, they engaged in what Ruth HaCohen identi‹es as oratorical moments, de‹ned as “the enrichment of the present with voices and beings of other times.”120 These moments allowed Jews to confront their new reality in Nazi Germany in terms of their past—a past ‹lled with suffering, but also triumph and pride. Verdi’s Nabucco and Handel’s Israelite oratorios thus functioned as not only a means of escape into past ages of glory but also a way to engage with the present and the common fate that bound German Jews together during the Third Reich.

130

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

With such value, the League eagerly appropriated Verdi and Handel. Writings on Verdi and Handel within the League show that this appropriation paralleled the Nazi regime’s own technique of exploiting music to support a sense of national community. Certain critics connected to the League treated their music as a bridge—in the spirit of Prinz’s speech at the Jewish Culture League Conference—that could lead to a future national music. In the writings of some critics, such as Hans Nathan, this exploitation was even more politically skewed. Critics speci‹cally tailored Nazi pronouncements on Handel and his use of Jewish stories from the Bible to meet nationalistic agendas in the League. In this way, League associates used the regime’s own technique of coloring musical history for national and political ends in an attempt to underscore the greatness of the Jewish Volk. Pointing out this similarity is not meant to accuse these writers of wrongdoing or equate them with the evils of the Nazis: they simply responded to the radically altered conditions the Nazi regime had created for them. Rather, this similarity should help us explain the League’s repertoire and the period. No one was immune to the vicious political and national struggle that music itself had become a part of, and, although Singer maintained that the League had “no intention of engaging in politics,”121 no musical organization could avoid doing so. Performing music in Nazi Germany was a political act.

chapter six

Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

music played many roles in the league: as a means of imagining nation, group integration, asserting national worth, consolation, catharsis, escape, and hope, to name a few. With such ›exibility, it is no surprise that there were contradictions in ideas of nationalism in music during the Third Reich. The various roles of music created competing narratives in music reception. Not only that, these narratives could change rather quickly over time. What was popular in the League in 1933 was not always what was popular in its ‹nal years. The reception of certain composers evolved alongside the League’s political context, as the Nazi regime prepared for the Holocaust. To illustrate, this closing chapter focuses on the League’s reception of Mendelssohn and, in particular, Mahler in the League’s ‹nal years. Today Mahler and Mendelssohn are consistently valued and evaluated based on their Jewish roots. The Nazis similarly assessed the composers based on race though they both converted from Judaism. With only their Jewishness in mind, the Nazis proscribed their music from Aryan-operated concert halls, and Nazi musicologists portrayed their music as emblematic of the vices in Jewish music. Their birth records, proof of their Jewish heritage, also provoked other forms of denigration: the regime renamed Mahlerstraße in Vienna, removed Rodin’s bust of Mahler from the Vienna Staatsoper, and destroyed the statue of Mendelssohn in front of Leipzig’s Gewandhaus concert hall, where Mendelssohn had conducted from 1845 to 1847. This list does not even include anti-Semitic abuses during their lifetimes, especially Mahler’s. But Jewish roots did not hold the same weight in the League. The fact that Mahler and Mendelssohn were two of the most high-pro‹le Jewish composers the Nazis victimized did not ensure their acceptance as authentic Jewish composers. They were, however, the only composers of Jewish origins among the most popular

131

132

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

composers (see ‹g. 6, chap. 3), with Mendelssohn assuming the highest rank overall and Mahler holding the lowest. Why? Let us begin with Mendelssohn. He was by far the most performed composer within the League, and his music was presented not only in the early years, but throughout the League’s existence. As an assimilated German Jew and the grandson of the great Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, he certainly would have appealed to the enlightened German Jewish leaders of the League initially. His music would also have continued to satisfy the League’s program requirements as musical politics within the League evolved. Still, his popularity had more to do with his role as a leading composer of the early nineteenth century. In the ‹rst decades of the twentieth century, Mendelssohn’s reputation in Germany had shifted slightly as audiences turned increasingly to new trends, represented in the works of composers such as Stravinsky and Bartók.1 What is more, many people believed he was not as signi‹cant as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Wagner—perhaps fallout from Wagner’s “Judaism in Music.” In 1934, Anneliese Landau observed, “Since Wagner’s ‘Judaism in Music,’ people have happily dismissed [Mendelssohn’s] works as ‘shallow’ and ‘outdated.’”2 Compounded by anti-Victorian reactions,3 such modern revaluations affected the League’s reception of Mendelssohn. In his review of the League’s 1934 performance of Elijah, Hans Nathan stated that “it is clear: we now view Mendelssohn differently than our parents.”4 The problem, Nathan explained, was that “vitality” had become more important than “good breeding,” and many of Mendelssohn’s early romantic works lacked “extremes of life.”5 Still, Nathan listed as exceptions to this verdict Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and his incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—works the German public as a whole continued to embrace.6 This attachment created quite a challenge for Nazi propagandists, who soon found that obliterating Mendelssohn from the ‹rmly established German canon was no easy task. Arguing that Mendelssohn’s success was engineered by Jews, and hardly the natural inclination of Germans, Karl Blessinger struggled to convince his readership of the error of their affection for Mendelssohn. He wrote, “In discussions of the Jewish question in music we are time and again confronted with the assertion that Mendelssohn, for instance, was nevertheless a great master. Against this it must be stressed that the question of mastery as such is absolutely irrelevant to the matter under consideration here.”7 Rather, he insisted that the question under discussion should be that of purpose. In Mendelssohn’s case, he wrote, the purpose of his mastery was to facilitate Ju-

Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

133

daism’s destruction of the glorious German musical tradition. Therefore, according to Blessinger, Germans should be more concerned about the disappearance of German musical works than with the prohibition of Mendelssohn’s music. And if musicians and music lovers still regret that their favorite compositions, i.e., the Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, the Hebrides overture, the Violin Concerto, etc., have disappeared from the program today, we may ‹rst point out that it is in‹nitely more regrettable that highly signi‹cant works by German composers, such as Schumann’s Violin Concerto, threatened to disappear completely because of Jewish intrigues.8

Here, Blessinger refashioned the facts for his own purposes. The Jewish violinist Joseph Joachim advised against the publication of Schumann’s Violin Concerto out of respect for Schumann’s memory. It did not serve Blessinger’s aims to mention that Clara Schumann and Brahms, who believed the composition shows signs of mental and creative weakness, also decided to withhold the work from the public.9 Theo Stengel and Herbert Gerigk were less creative in their discussion of Mendelssohn within the pages of the Lexikon der Juden in der Musik, reiterating the pronouncements of Blessinger and Wagner to demean the composer and his music.10 Hans Joachim Moser, in contrast, departed drastically from this party line. In Kleine deutsche Musikgeschichte (1937), he mentioned Mendelssohn’s lack of profundity. But he explained that the ban on Mendelssohn’s music since 1933 was the result of political “necessity,” rather than an “absolute lack of value” in his work.11 That is to say, Moser believed regime leaders ignored the high quality of Mendelssohn’s composition and disposed of his music in order to maintain a cohesive policy on the issue of Jews in music. To make matters worse given the political landscape, Moser incited the Nazi press by responding favorably to several of Mendelssohn’s compositions, including the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.12 This stand against general party policy and the Nazi response exist as a testament to the prominence of Mendelssohn, and, in particular, his music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In fact, this popularity was so formidable Nazi cultural leaders aggressively solicited new music for the Shakespeare play. Several articles from the period describe this doomed effort. In 1934, the Manchester Guardian reported that an early production of an “Aryan-only version” of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream was considered “more re-

134

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

markable for rhythmic emphasis than melodious ideas.”13 However, the general results were not acceptable, and the search for a Mendelssohn replacement continued. In 1938, this quest was entrusted to the Munich composer Carl Orff.14 Orff, who accepted the commission after it was refused by Richard Strauss, Hans P‹tzner, and Werner Egk, responded as follows: “Today I was thrilled to receive the order to [compose] music for Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream from General Intendant Meissner, and I thank you extraordinarily for the trust shown [me] once again.”15 Despite Orff ’s obvious enthusiasm, his composition never earned widespread interest. The same is true of as many as forty-four different scores, which were tested between 1933 and 1944 as replacements for Mendelssohn’s incidental music.16 The Nazis were eventually forced simply to allow Mendelssohn’s music “while mention of the composer’s name was omitted.”17 In this way, the League had a lucky monopoly over the music of an accomplished and admired composer, whom not even Hitler’s deputies could completely displace. Nazi functionaries encouraged this attachment to Mendelssohn. They even considered giving the statue of Mendelssohn that stood in front of Leipzig’s Gewandhaus to the League, before destroying it on the night of 9 November 1936.18 Nevertheless, the League could still continue to honor their relationship to Mendelssohn through performances of his music, especially his beloved incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mendelssohn’s incidental music was presented with the League’s full production of Shakespeare’s play on 2 December 1936 and in the League orchestra’s ‹nal performance on 15 May 1941. Excerpts were also performed in a concert on 3 January 1937. In the program to the 1936 performance, which was the most popular League offering in the 1936–37 season,19 Karl Wiener highlighted the admiration Mendelssohn’s incidental music had traditionally enjoyed. He cited Robert Schumann’s observation of 1843 that many attended the Shakespeare play only in order to hear Mendelssohn’s music.20 Wiener, in this way, also denied traditional power structures that would label Mendelssohn’s music “accompaniment,” thus secondary to Shakespeare’s play. In a review of the performance, Arthur Eloesser similarly put Mendelssohn’s incidental music and Shakespeare’s play on equal footing. He reported, “The marriage of Shakespeare’s comedy with Mendelssohn’s music has now lasted more than a hundred years, and it has remained very happy.”21 Eloesser’s treatment of the play and music as a long-standing union, like Wiener’s celebration of the music, de‹ed the regime and its attitude that Mendelssohn’s mu-

Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

135

sic was disposable. However, the Nazi quest to dispose of Mendelssohn’s music (through rewrites of Mendelssohn’s incidental music, for one), as Levi asserts, “unwittingly kept [Mendelssohn’s] memory alive,” and, by that logic, perpetuated interest in Mendelssohn’s incidental music.22 Mendelssohn’s Jewish origins and family history were important. But the League’s affection for the work— “one of the most expressive and well-known compositions by the young Mendelssohn”23—must be seen primarily as an extension of this ongoing attention to the piece and its overall standing in Germany at the time. Though to a lesser extent, the same is also true of other League offerings: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (performed in the League’s ‹rst and third years of operation); the Hebrides overture (performed in the ‹rst, third, and seventh years); and the Italian Symphony (performed in the fourth year). This explanation does not similarly apply to Mendelssohn’s Elijah. Elijah (completed in 1846 and revised in 1847), as an oratorio, exerted an appeal within the League similar to Handel’s Israelite oratorios and even Verdi’s Nabucco (see chap. 5). The work recounts the main actions in the prophet’s life as explained in 1 Kings.24 It was the ‹rst oratorio performed in the League on 6 March 1934, and excerpts from the work were performed in March 1934, December 1935, March 1936, December 1936, twice in January 1937, January 1938, September 1938, December 1939, and March 194125—so many times that Alfred Guttmann insisted arias from Elijah “should really not be sung for a while, because they have been heard a little too often.”26 Jeffrey Sposato has read the oratorio as evidence of Mendelssohn’s relationship to Protestant Christianity and exposed an underlying Christological program with the prophet Elijah representing “an Old Testament Christ.”27 But, as Botstein insists and Sposato concedes,28 this New Covenant orientation was not recognized in Jewish communities in Nazi Germany, and the work was embraced enthusiastically as a Jewish work. Alexander L. Ringer was sixteen years old when he heard Elijah performed by the League at the Oranienburgerstraße Synagogue in Berlin in 1937. In 1997, he was still able to recall the audience’s emotional response and commitment to both the music and theology of the work. Indeed, based on this memory of the performance, there can be “no doubt that in 1937 Jews believed they were hearing a Jewish work written by a German Jew af‹rming the greatness of Judaism.”29 As with Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, the music of Elijah was also claimed by the synagogue. The music was recast to accompany Hebrew texts and served to inspire new compositions for the liberal synagogues in Germany.30 In spite of this activity, the Jewishness of the work was not, at this time, used as evidence of Mendelssohn’s Jewish self-identi‹cation, and “many a conscious

136

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Jew turned away from Mendelssohn,” unable to accept his baptism.31 In fact, some men of prominence within the League felt Mendelssohn’s music was too German for the Jewish organization.32 One such personality was Hans Nathan. As we have seen, he was involved in the nationalistic appropriation of Handel and Verdi within the pages of the Zionist Jüdische Rundschau. In a review of Elijah, however, Nathan maintained that Mendelssohn “conformed almost completely to the mentality of his environment.”33 Two years later, at the Jewish Culture League Conference, he simply stated that Mendelssohn was the “purest German classicist.”34 As Landau observed after World War II, it took Hitler for this perception to change—to make Jews aware of their “mistake.”35 Put another way, Hitler showed German Jews that in spite of conversion, assimilation, or acculturation, they would always be Jews. This viewpoint in›uenced works on Mendelssohn written in the decades following the war—works that now portrayed the composer as Jewish rather than German.36 This new image of Mendelssohn directly opposed his reception among German Jews in the years preceding World War II. Within the League, his high standing had to do with his enduring popularity in Germany, his grandfather, the appropriation of Elijah as a Jewish work, and the monopoly League leaders had over his music given Nazi musical politics— not his acceptance as a perceived authentic Jewish composer. Mahler likewise enjoyed a prominence in the League that went beyond racial considerations. However, he never experienced the same degree of popularity as Mendelssohn. Hinkel himself cited Mahler’s music as an example of what the League should perform.37 But, during the League’s ‹rst ‹ve years, beginning in the second year, the League performed only Mahler’s Lieder, a genre particularly valued by the League. Even this limited endorsement of the composer, however, according to the Jüdische Rundschau, was an “obligation.”38 This initial attitude should come as no surprise. There is nothing particularly “Aryan” about disliking Mahler. Before 1911, Mahler’s most antagonistic Viennese critic was Robert Hirschfeld (1857–1914), a man of Jewish origins.39 Certain aspects of Hirschfeld’s activities suggest the role of Jewish self-hatred. However, as any professional would do, he condemned Mahler’s music based on aesthetic criteria, rather than Jewish roots, and what he believed was Mahler’s exaggeration of unwanted modern traits.40 Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), an Austrian with Jewish ancestry, who was baptized Roman Catholic, responded similarly forty years later, though he did not discount Mahler’s talent. After deeming Mahler’s music worthless, he admitted that “quite obviously it took a set of very rare talents to produce this bad music.”41

Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

137

It is hard to deduce whether or not aversions such as Hirschfeld’s and Wittgenstein’s re›ected a more general negative opinion that limited the League’s early engagement with the composer. Reviews of performances in the Jewish press were never completely negative, and comments ranged from the reporting of facts and moderate accolade to extreme expressions of appreciation and thanks. Just as in accepted “Aryan” newspapers, which were to replace Kritik (criticism) with Betrachtung (observation), true criticism had no place in the League.42 In fact, during this period, Kurt Singer wrote about the mischief (“Unfug”) of musical criticism in “Vom Unfug musikalischer Kritik,” and an article in the Jewish press of 1935 insisted critics had a special position in the League community with a responsibility to care for the well-being of its readers.43 This responsibility paralleled what was seen as the function of the Jewish press more generally at the time: to boost morale and lead a Jewish “spiritual and moral renewal”44—a role that may have precluded the negativity criticism often demands. Still, based on characterizations of League audiences as conservative, some audience members did initially view Mahler’s music in a negative light, as too modern. League or no League, his music had not found the acceptance Mahler himself foresaw in the future. The progressive Anneliese Landau, however, remained con‹dent that his time would come: “Mahler’s art is the art of tomorrow. The world is neither wholly ready to follow him. But some day it will take his name and his music as a program to follow.”45 She herself endeavored to orchestrate the ful‹llment of this prediction within the League. At the 1936 Conference, she declared, “[Mahler] is the bright ›ame, artistically and humanly speaking, the holy ›ame, who stands at the beginning of our century and it must be the important task ‹nally to place his work in the programs of every single Culture League.”46 She believed that Mahler’s compositions were the key to modern music at the time. By programming his music and understanding his compositional process, League leaders and members, she insisted, would be able to appreciate the music of the twentieth century.47 She thus championed Mahler, not as a Jew, but as a composer of purely musical value. Landau’s argument, however, was of little consequence in the eyes of many of her contemporaries. Mahler’s reception as a Jewish composer, which, like Mendelssohn’s, was in›uenced by his conversion to Catholicism, may well have been the main point of contention within the League. Landau herself admitted, “There is nothing Jewish in Mahler’s music. He neither felt obliged to write Jewish music nor did he recognize religious or racial obligations.”48 For this reason, Landau dubbed Mahler the “anachronis-

138

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

tic” (“Unzeitgemäße”): “On the one hand, because he is Jewish . . . on the other hand, because he is not Jewish enough, because he did not write Jewish music!”49 His life and music, for Landau, simply did not correspond to values of the 1930s. His music, according to Leo Hirsch, was thus included in League programs only to supplement the limited scope of true Jewish music, that is to say, “Yiddish folksongs and synagogue liturgy.”50 This judgment of Mahler as “not Jewish enough” may have derived in part from Mahler’s defenders, who stressed how German the composer was in response to anti-Semitic critiques before World War I. In a 1910 review of Mahler’s new Eighth Symphony, which weds the Latin hymn “Veni, Creator Spiritus” with Goethe’s Faust, Part II, Paul Stefan highlighted Mahler’s Lieder and proclaimed, “Hardly any artist has lived more according to the German idea and the German ideal” than Mahler.51 Indeed, Mahler was the ‹rst composer to seriously devote his full attention to Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805–8), the German folk song anthology published by Achim von Arnim (1781–1831) and Clemens Brentano (1778–1842), which Goethe believed every German home should have.52 Other literary predilections that underscored Mahler’s strong identi‹cation with German culture included Jean Paul Richter’s Titan, a name Mahler attached to his own First Symphony, the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s Patmos and Der Rhein, and the poetry of Friedrich Rückert, which was the textual basis for Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder.53 During his student days in Vienna, Mahler was also involved with the so-called Pernerstorfer Circle, an ambitious debating club that formed around Engelbert Pernerstorfer and Victor Adler in 1878. Mahler fully embraced the group’s belief in the idea of a uni‹ed greater Germany and fascination with Wagner. After reading Wagner’s essay “Religion and Art” (1880) in which Wagner champions vegetarianism, Mahler even became a vegetarian, just as Hitler would decades later. In a letter to a friend he wrote of his resolution, “I expect of it no less than the regeneration of humanity.”54 Mahler’s involvement in German culture and ideals helps clarify the proscription by a new censor in Hinkel’s of‹ce of Mahler’s song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. The censor, for good reason, could not believe Mahler was Jewish.55 In July 1935 (in honor of Mahler’s seventy-‹fth birthday) and May 1936 (the twenty-‹fth anniversary of Mahler’s death), however, there were efforts within the League community to enhance Jewish pride through the composer, just as there had been in musicological discussions of Mahler during the interwar years.56 Hans Nathan’s contribution was the identi‹cation of Hasidic characteristics in Mahler’s music, which Max Brod had also invoked in an essay of

Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

139

1920.57 Oskar Baum in turn highlighted the rhythmical freedom in Mahler’s music,58 and Ludwig Landau responded to the primacy of linear melody over harmony—identi‹ed as a fundamental characteristic of “Hebrew-oriental music.”59 However, these articles were not without quali‹cation. Even those that sought in this way to claim Mahler did not ignore the challenges the composer posed to his music’s classi‹cation as authentic Jewish music. For example, L. Landau admitted that the content of Mahler’s melody was “predominately occidental, especially Austrian and Bohemian.”60 Therefore, Mahler’s music was “not Jewish music, but rather music of a Jewish person.”61 Nathan, who would completely ignore Mahler in his discussion of “Jewish” and general literature at the Jewish Culture League Conference, likewise admitted that Mahler was an Austrian and had contributed to his heritage as the “consummation” (“Vollender”) of the Austrian symphonic tradition.62 This attribution was ‹tting. According to Oskar Baum, Mahler knew “as good as nothing” about the “true content of Jewishness.”63 This confusion even among those who sought to identify Jewish aspects in Mahler’s music did not help the composer’s standing in the League.64 As we have seen, the League embraced Bloch because he harmonized with a new ideal of Jewish authenticity prominent in the 1920s. He strove as a conscious Jew to write Jewish music. Mahler, in contrast, clearly did not, and his path of assimilation was no longer an example to follow. Leon Botstein rightly supposes that this new outlook “may have helped retard the appeal of Mahler within Jewish communities during the 1920s and 1930s.”65 Although the Jewish press responded to Mahler’s weaknesses as a composer of nationalistic value, no one associated with the League could overlook his place in the German symphonic tradition and embrace him as a genuine Jewish composer without quali‹cation. Practical concerns, however, also hindered Mahler’s initial acceptance in the League. Economic crisis and in›ation prevented frequent performances of Mahler’s costly symphonies already after 1929 in Germany and Austria.66 In the League, the economic situation was of course much worse. In the spring of 1937, to cut costs, the League even discussed discontinuing opera performances and orchestral concerts altogether.67 Before this crisis, the director Rosenstock saw the music of the “Jewish musical moderns,” Mahler included, as the main challenge. In 1934, he insisted Mahler’s orchestral music “must be left for the future, until our orchestra has risen to the dif‹culties of modern scores through a further enlargement of the wind ensemble and a further increase in ability.”68 This moratorium included Mahler’s Lieder, which also “created a dif‹cult task

140

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

for the orchestra.”69 Perhaps this explains why the League never performed Das Lied von der Erde, though the score was purchased at the end of 1936.70 Nevertheless, in April 1939, a Mahler symphony was performed for the ‹rst time for League audiences under the direction of Rudolf Schwarz. The League critic Micha Michalowitz commented on the signi‹cance of this performance of Mahler’s First Symphony: “This evening was unusual even in the choice of its program: Weinberger, Stravinsky, and then—for the ‹rst time in these concerts—a symphony by Gustav Mahler. At ‹rst glance, it may appear astonishing that, in all the previous symphony evenings of this orchestra, the greatest Jewish symphonist was missing.”71 He continued, “It goes without saying that the electri‹ed audience showered the director and the orchestra with ovations.”72 Given the controversy surrounding Mahler’s Jewishness, it is ‹tting that this effort waited until interest in authentic Jewish music had died down. Music of distraction, as we saw in chapter 2, and hope or personal re›ection, as this case demonstrates, had become the order of the day. At this time, League leaders were no longer looking for a Jewish ideal—an authentic Jewish composer—but rather someone like them, who struggled and could thus offer consolation or a feeling of solidarity. Mahler was such a ‹gure. During rehearsals of the First Symphony, Rudolf Schwarz explicitly equated Mahler’s struggles with those of League members and musicians.73 In 1940, in honor of Mahler’s eightieth birthday, Karl Wiener celebrated this picture of Mahler in con›ict and offered him to the League as a suffering hero of sorts. He explained that Mahler’s ability to cope with “sorrow and the negative aspects of life . . . make his character endearing and exemplary for us.”74 This theme, common in the literature on the composer, had already been implicitly highlighted in discussions of the composer and his music in the Jewish press. In Der Morgen, for example, Ludwig Landau emphasized the tension in Mahler between “Jewishness—Christianness—Germanness” (“Judentum— Christentum—Deutschtum”)75—a variation on the composer’s oft-quoted pronouncement that he was thrice homeless.76 Singer, from exile, speci‹cally responded to this picture of Mahler as the outsider and, like Schwarz, drew his own parallels. He wrote, “Even if one cannot go along wholeheartedly with his spiritual attitude, much [about his work] can be understood quite differently by us today: Mahler is the eternally driven, restless man, who feels everywhere like one living in exile.”77 This more personal response to Mahler took on even greater meaning in 1941. In the League’s ‹nal season, crippled by the losses of funds, musicians, and two of its leaders (Werner and Singer), the League mounted yet another Mahler

Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

141

symphony. This performance of the Second Symphony, the “Resurrection,” on 27 February 1941, again under the baton of Schwarz, inspired strong, sometimes emotional reactions that remain vivid in the memories of former League participants. Susanna Wisten-Weyl, Fritz Wisten’s daughter, explains that the performance was “unbelievable” (“unglaublich”), “unforgettable” (“unvergesslich”).78 The violinist Henry Meyer, calls it “the most impressive experience, which will always remain in my memory.”79 He pointedly states, “Every measure reminds me of experiences that cannot be erased, even though it would be very nice to forget many of them.”80 The performance itself was met, after a few minutes of silence for those struggling to hold back tears, with a standing ovation in expression of deep appreciation.81 In his review of the performance, Michalowitz wrote, “The listeners felt in their state of captivation that they were attending a musical event for which there was no possibility of comparison in the history of the Culture League.”82 Several fantastical events and stories deepened this engagement. Meyer remembers the exceptional preparation for the concert as well as the circumstances of Schwarz’s acquaintance with the work. The orchestra was no longer completely professional; there were a few very good amateurs in it. Nothing against amateurs, but professional orchestras have four or ‹ve rehearsals for a symphony like this; we had over thirty rehearsals with Rudolf Schwarz, who rehearsed very precisely and was a very good director of Mahler. He learned the hard way. In 1939, he was in solitary con‹nement and had gained the privilege of receiving scores, and, there in custody, he learned all the Mahler symphonies by heart.83

Peter Ohlson, Schwarz’s son-in-law, con‹rms that Schwarz was arrested one day after war broke out and held in solitary con‹nement for ten months.84 There he occupied himself with intense study of Mahler’s scores. In addition to this powerful preoccupation with Mahler, which Schwarz passed to his orchestra, the work’s performance was preceded by a dramatic death. On 8 February 1941, after being detained by the Gestapo, the baritone Wilhelm Guttmann arrived late to a song recital, entitled “Wort-Lied-Ton.” After performing the ‹rst phrase of Mussorgsky’s “My Tears Give Birth to Flowers,” he died on the League stage of a heart attack at the age of ‹fty-‹ve. Mahler’s Second Symphony was understood as an unof‹cial memorial to the singer.85 If this was not enough, there was also a musical basis for the audience’s unprecedented reaction to a League performance. In the program notes, Karl

142

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Wiener wrote, “The melos of Gustav Mahler is for the most part hymnic and passionate. Still, whenever he struggles his way through to tranquillity or joie de vivre, movements emerge of indescribable loveliness and sweetness. The ‘Second’ is the most perfect proof of that.”86 In this passage, Wiener emphasizes the expressive potential of the Second Symphony, with moments of passion and gentle sweetness. This potential gives way in this work to extremes of positive and negative emotion—a duality that many authors stress, almost to the point of cliché, in works on Mahler’s life and music: “Trapped between believing in a higher existence and calling his entire worldview into question, Mahler harboured a tortured soul that maintained a tenuous balance between idealism and nihilism.”87 One of the ‹rst formulations of this observation emerged as early as 1945, when Warren Storey Smith observed how the “real fascination of Mahler lies in his protean variety, even in the ›at contradiction of his personality, such as his extreme sophistication and his equally pronounced naïvete, his bitter pessimism and his bland optimism, his ability to be both simple and grandiose.”88 In 1922, Adolf Weissmann credited this confusion in Mahler’s music to the composer’s “lacerated soul” (“zerrissene Seele”),89 indexing the late romantic term Zerrissenheit associated with a splitting or rift in a man’s soul.90 The characterization of Mahler as divided points to his later resurrection by Leonard Bernstein, who was in›uenced by his own self-identi‹cation with the composer, as the tormented double man—Jew versus Christian, provincial Bohemian versus Viennese, composer versus conductor, and so on91—and later the marginal man in Henry Lea’s Mahler monograph.92 It would also play on the sympathies apropos of the post–World War II era, enhancing Mahler’s appeal as a victim of Nazi repression.93 For League audiences in 1941, however, this duality, expressed in the Second Symphony, was not attached to an extramusical agenda or revival effort. It paralleled League members’ own optimism and pessimism—their hopes and fears—and it was this timeliness that provoked such a powerful response. As Hanslick observed, art triumphs “if it confronts us with the breath of the current age, with the pulse of our emotions and desires.”94 We have seen other works succeed for similar reasons: the pessimism and extreme darkness conjured by Schubert’s Winterreise ful‹lled a need for League members, creating an opportunity for emotional release, just as Judas Maccabeus and Nabucco were popular because they communicated a sense of hope and pride. In the fourth movement of the symphony, “Urlicht” (Primal Light) from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” the work’s “spiritual focus,”95 Mahler juxtaposed these emotional extremes, capitalizing on the disparate moods of the text and ful‹lling the various emotional needs of League members. In fact,

Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

143

looking back on Mahler’s Second in the League, the oboist Kurt Michaelis commented, “It’s as if it was written for that kind of an occasion.”96 Oh Röschen rot! Der Mensch liegt in grösster Not! Der Mensch liegt in grösster Pein! Je lieber möcht’ ich im Himmel sein! Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg; da kam ein Engelein und wollt’ mich abweisen. Ach nein! Ich lie mich nicht abweisen! Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott! Der liebe Gott wird mir ein Lichtchen geben wird leuchten mir bis in das ewig selig Leben!

Oh little red rose! Man lies in the greatest need! Man lies in the greatest suffering! How much rather would I be in Heaven! I came upon a broad road; There came an angel and wanted to block my way. Ah no! I did not let myself be turned away: I am God, and to God I shall return! Dear God will grant me a small light, will light my way to eternal, blissful life!

The darkness of the time is captured in the words “Der Mensch liegt in grösster Not! Der Mensch liegt in grösster Pein!” (“Man lies in the greatest need! Man lies in the greatest suffering!”), which Mahler set in a minor key, with a narrow vocal range, and a hopeless, static return at the end of the line to the initial pitch (A /G#) (see example 12). Only in the next line, “Je lieber möcht’ ich im Himmel sein,” does the range expand an octave jump on the word Himmel (heaven), the hope of escape. The solemnity of the ‹rst section transforms to a light, impressionistic texture in the middle section with the harp and rolling triplets in the clarinets, which conjure the angel, represented by the solo violin. The change in mood is further radicalized through a key change from D  major to A major. On the word abweisen (reject or turn away), the C# of the key signature drops away, signaling a ›irtation with the minor and the powerlessness created initially in the poem’s opening line. Three bars later, however, the C # returns with force, and the dreamy texture is broken to underscore the word nein and the recovery of power in the text: “Ach nein! Ich ließ mich nicht abweisen!” (“Ah no! I did not let myself be turned away”). In the ‹nal section, again in D  major, the vocal line concludes with a slow octave rise to E (see example 13), set to the text “das ewig selig Leben” (“eternal, blissful

144

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Example 12. Vocal part in bars 15–21. Excerpts reproduced from Gustav Mahler, Symphonie Nr. 2 (c-moll), ed. Internationalen Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft, Wien (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1971).

Example 13. The last four bars of the vocal part in the fourth movement.

life”) and thus the ful‹llment of the text’s journey from despair to hope. This was a powerful journey for which League members longed in February 1941. Such a voyage was also communicated on a larger scale in the symphony, ful‹lling a common symphonic formula of darkness to light or per aspera ad astra. Goldsmith has described his parents’ reaction to the Finale, the culmination of this large-scale journey, and the hope it inspired, especially the words “Stop trembling. Prepare to live”—lines Mahler himself added to Klopstock’s verses in the Finale.97 In this way, in the League’s ‹nal years, Mahler’s music took on a new urgency for management and appealed to League audiences generally on a personal level. This change in signi‹cance points to the fundamental role of music in times of crisis and was, in some ways, part of a larger trend among audiences as well as composers preceding and during World War II. The composer Viktor Ullmann, born on the Moravian-Polish border in 1898, for example, similarly turned inward by composing according to a more personal musical aesthetic during the early 1940s, while emprisoned in Terezín.98 The evolution of Mahler’s reception in the League, however, also foreshadowed the ful‹llment of Mahler’s and Landau’s predictions and the rise of interest in the composer after the Third Reich, partly as a result of reactions against the Nazi prohibition of his music and the pro-Jewish agenda of the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein in the 1960s.99 Such a change could only be fully realized in the League’s ‹nal years, after the early debate on Jewish music subsided. The controversy surrounding the question of Mahler as an authentic Jewish composer had given way to pressing concerns of emigration and survival as Nazi policy toward Jews became more malignant. By moving beyond its earlier

Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

145

debates, responding to the changing situation of Jews in Germany, the League was able to remain relevant until its very end on 11 September 1941. *

*

*

On this day, just over eight years after its founding, Hitler’s regime of‹cially dissolved the Jewish Culture League. In 1939, the Nazis had invaded Poland. By 1941, Germany was embroiled in war on two fronts—with both Britain and the Soviet Union. Hitler had also become committed to the elimination of European Jewry and had approved the mass deportation of German Jews eastward. Although the Final Solution was not discussed until the Wannsee meeting on 20 January 1942, after a postponement most likely caused by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler’s approval of deportation was a decisive turn toward murder.100 Time had run out for Jews in Germany, and the Jewish Culture League no longer had a place in Hitler’s plans. As reason for the liquidation of the League, however, the secret police cited Paragraph 1 of the Reich president’s order of 28 February 1933—for “the protection of people and state.”101 But the musical activity of the Jewish Culture League would not be forgotten. The Nazis had allowed individual League artists as well as the League orchestra and choir to record from 1933 through 1937 in conjunction with two small companies. These companies, both of which relied on the artists of the Culture League, were Hirsch Lewin’s Hebrew Bookshop, under the Semer label, and Moritz Lewin’s Spezial-Radio-Haus-Lukra, under the Lukraphon label. The latter label became, due to its frequent use of Culture League artists and the League choir and orchestra, “the record label of the Jewish Kulturbund.”102 When Jewish families emigrated or were sent to concentration camps, their record collections were con‹scated by the police, SA or SS, and given to the tax of‹ces charged with the “exploitation of Jewish assets transferred to the Reich.”103 Ultimately, these collections were also made available to the Ministry of Propaganda.104 In this way, the regime preserved their “Jewish experiment” just as they sought to destroy it. This contradictory Nazi impulse was part of a larger goal and paralleled several other regime projects. For example, at Alfred Rosenberg’s Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage (Institute for Research on the Jewish Question), in Frankfurt—one of several quasi-scienti‹c German institutes, founded beginning in mid-1935—Nazi pseudoscientists conducted “Jewish research” (Judenforschung). That is to say, they photographed Jews and measured their skulls, while also examining culture and customs.105 In the area of music,

146

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Theo Stengel and Herbert Gerigk compiled the Lexikon der Juden in der Musik, an encyclopedic description of various Jews and their musical activities, published in 1940. In the introduction, the authors explained this work, in brief, as “salvage anthropology” or the study of communities on the eve of extinction: “It is important that the creation of this dictionary documents all facts and interconnections on Jews that advanced within the area of music and to pass these on now, as it may be impossible to clarify and pass on these things at a later date.”106 Nazi leaders also created the Jewish Central Museum (Jüdisches Zentralmuseum) in Prague. It existed later than the League—the idea arose at the beginning of 1942—but, like the League, it was sustained by Jewish employees under the supervision of the Nazis. These employees, Jewish scholars, collected, preserved, and exhibited Judaica.107 In an address of 16 March 1941, Alfred Rosenberg described the value of this work in the context of his own Institute’s work. If the Jewish question is solved in Germany—and someday in all Europe—then perhaps a new generation who will come after us might be unable to remember what actually transpired during these decades. Our grandchildren, liberated from Jewish in›uence, might then fall victim to fanciful ideas and might not be able to evaluate the potency of the Jewish people amidst the Europeans as we must do today. Human memory is very short; frequently, thirty or ‹fty years suf‹ce so that even the hardest fates no longer need to be borne within a people’s völkisch consciousness. Therefore, we should not be content with the experiences of the last few decades, not merely with the books and speeches that emerged out of the immediate struggle; but rather we must take the knowledge we gained from lived experience, and which was even (in part) based on profound insights, and supplement it with comprehensive research.108

Even as the Nazis prepared for the Holocaust, they needed the Jew. Much like the Orient for the West,109 the image of the Jew functioned as a de‹ning and essential Other.110 As Rosenberg insisted, however, knowledge of the enemy could in more practical terms serve as a cautionary tale. In the immediate present, it could also help garner support for the anti-Semitic agenda. Indeed, the Nazis victimized fellow countrymen with no external—physical or cultural— evidence of their supposed difference.111 Without this evidence, the millions of moderates who had voted for Nazi candidates might continue to object to anti-

Beyond Ethnic Loyalties

147

Jewish legislation.112 For all of these reasons, the League remained valuable to the regime, even after its activity was suspended. League members, however, confronted a very different reality after the League’s dissolution. Often exhausting physical labor replaced rehearsals and concerts, though music would return, for various reasons, in the concentration camps. The ultimate legacy of the League, from this perspective, was far from clear. Fritz Wisten described it this way in a letter to Dr. Eppstein of 27 September 1941. My co-workers achieved cultural work for the Jews in Germany in all these dif‹cult years, mostly in far from simple circumstances. What was created in objective values doesn’t need to be emphasized now. What it has signi‹ed for the many thousands of Jews people in comfort, edi‹cation, and encouragement is dif‹cult to estimate.113

In the following decades, other former members and scholars have also considered the League and its ultimate signi‹cance. What did the League achieve? What did the League mean to Jews in Nazi Germany? How should the League be remembered? In many ways, these questions start and end with Kurt Singer.

Epilogue: The Legacy of the League

during kristallnacht, kurt singer, the first leader and cofounder of the Jewish Culture League, was visiting his sister and lecturing at Harvard University.1 Ernest Lenart, the Tempelherr in the League’s inaugural performance (1933) of Lessing’s Nathan the Wise and émigré since 1938, visited Singer during his trip. Lenart told him about Kristallnacht and urged him to remain in America. Singer replied: “Dear Lenart, I must go back.”2 Singer was offered a university position during his stay in the United States,3 but out of loyalty and the import he placed on the League, Singer refused. He returned to Europe “to rescue what could be rescued.”4 En route in Rotterdam, friends and acquaintances were able to intercede and persuade Singer to suspend his homecoming. Within a few days, he was convinced of the futility of continuing his trip to Berlin: he believed, with conditions worsening for Jews, the League could no longer function in Nazi Germany. On 8 December 1938, Singer wrote three farewell letters from Amsterdam to his League co-workers, including one to the Nazi Hans Hinkel. He remained in Holland and, until he realized the severity of the situation, participated in musical activities there, including concerts at the Joodsche Schouwburg, or Jewish Theater, which the Nazis established in 1941 based on the model of the Berlin Jewish Culture League.5 With the Nazi occupation of Holland, Singer tried to return to the United States, eventually pinning all his hopes on a non-quota visa. But no means of escape was forthcoming. On 15 July 1942, the ‹rst deportations from Amsterdam to Auschwitz began.6 Between August 1942 and November 1943, the Jewish Theater, of all places, was used as a deportation center, and Jews in the region, including Singer, reported there to await transport.7 Because of his “outstanding service to Germany’s artistic community,” Singer was sent to the “model” concentration camp Terezín, where he died on 7 February 1944.8 Singer’s rise and fall with the Jewish Culture League projects an image of 148

Epilogue

149

the organization as place of both salvation and damnation. From the very beginning, the regime used the League, and Singer, who regularly negotiated with high Nazi of‹cials, knew better than anyone else the extent of the League’s collaboration with Hitler’s regime. Certainly, others were aware that the Nazis exploited the League for propaganda purposes. In his diary entry of 9 September 1936, Victor Klemperer described the situation. The Nazi regime is more ‹rmly in the saddle than ever . . . And the whole world inside and outside Germany is keeping its head down. The Jewish Culture League (they should be hanged) have issued a statement, saying they had nothing to do with sensational foreign news reports about the situation of German Jews. Next they will certify that Der Stürmer9 publishes nothing but the truth in fondest fashion—Bolshevism rages in Spain, while here there is peace, order, justice, true democracy.10

But most members of the League community fully understood the magnitude of this alliance only in hindsight. This organization had been permitted to function under the strictest supervision by the Hitler regime, and only now, in retrospect, do we know, that in fact, we had “been used” to show the outside world, how well German Jews were still treated, by having their own theatre, etc. At the time we were not aware of this, and just happy, to be able to perform in a very professional atmosphere, with artists, who had stood on the stages of the Berlin Opera houses and Concert stages until then.11

Singer must have known then, on some level, what some former members are only ‹nding out now. But still he was willing to bargain with the Nazis. He saw something extraordinary in the League: the organization—his organization—gave Jews in Germany not only work, allowing actors and musicians to participate in their artistic ‹eld and hone their chosen craft, but also “a feeling of being home, that one belonged together, that one had a common destiny.”12 Lenart ties this positive function to the League’s insignia, a torch and the hexagonal Star of David, which appeared on their monthly publication and many programs (see ‹g. 10): “Not coincidentally the torch was the symbol of the Culture League.”13 The organization was “a ray of hope in a cloudy time.”14 For League performers and audience members, this was quite literally “the only possibility” for all that after 9 November 1938, when Jews were banned from at-

150

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

tending German cultural events and other Jewish cultural institutions were closed.15 And yet, after Kristallnacht, it grew harder to avoid the realities of the League’s situation in Nazi Germany and thus reap these psychological bene‹ts. The Nazis, however, recognized the propaganda value of the League more than ever and had carefully guarded the League’s performance hall on Kommandantenstrasse during the terrible night of 9–10 November 1938. Baumann recalls, “Hinkel said that it was probably clear to us also that our people and our house had not been kept from destruction without reason.”16 And so the Nazis ordered the League to open its doors immediately despite the emotional and physical chaos within the League community. Werner Levie, who was put in charge while Singer was in the United States, realized that the regime’s plans to exploit the League in this way presented a rare opportunity for the Jewish organization to exert its own pressure on Hitler’s government. He made a list of 120 people who had been arrested and demanded their release, explaining that without them, League work was impossible.17 A testament to the importance the Nazis placed on the Culture League, Hinkel agreed to Levie’s demand upon the condition that the League reopen within three days.18 The League resumed performances with a play already prepared and scheduled for performance at the time: Regen und Wind (The Wind and the Rain), an English comedy by Merton Hodge. Martin Brandt, an actor with the League from 1933 through 1938, describes the absurdity of that performance and his amazement that people came to see a comedy—came to laugh—after such brutality: “We had to [perform], we were commanded, but that people, that Jews had the heart . . . could laugh—I couldn’t understand it.”19 Though, for Brandt, the League no longer offered the psychological lift it once had, Levie’s list shows that the organization still offered its performers a certain protection. This protection continued into wartime, as the League oboist Kurt Michaelis recalls. We were exempt from being called for “labor.” I was given a letter from Goebbels’ appointee, Hinkel (State commissar Hans Hinkel), which was honored without question. Later, when the deportations had begun, I was even once called to the Labor Of‹ce to be sent away for forced labor. I had the letter in my pocket from Hinkel which would supposedly take care of the problem. So there I was standing, thoroughly intimidated by this Nazi fellow sitting there, and everyone around me kept getting taken out right away (the other prisoners) and I was just trying to evaluate the whole situation. I took the letter out and he was terribly angry about it. I slipped away from him and escaped. So that saved me. Two months later, I was able to emigrate.20

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fig. 10. Cover of the League’s program, November 1933. Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

152

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

Even in the concentration camps, participation in the League saved the violinist Henry Meyer, later a member of the renowned LaSalle Quartet, from certain death. He recounts how, on the night before he was to be gassed, at the age of only eighteen, a Jewish prisoner doctor mentioned he was from Breslau. “From Breslau!” Meyer exclaimed, “I played in Breslau with the Jewish Kulturbund, with the orchestra—a soloist.” The doctor responded, “Are you the little boy who played the Tartini concerto?” After Meyer af‹rmed that he was, the doctor left, returning a moment later with a dead body. He exchanged Meyer’s information with that of the corpse, left the body, and carried Meyer out of the barrack. Through that act, Meyer explains, “I was back alive.”21 In this way, the League provided emotional solace for some and physical asylum for others. Even the newsletter of the Association of Immigrants from Central Europe, published in Tel Aviv, claimed three years after the League was dissolved that these constructive contributions outweighed the immorality of the League’s collaboration: the “positive value of the Kulturbund was so fundamental that it was even necessary to accept as part of the bargain, so to speak, the fact that Nazi propaganda utilized this institution for its own campaign of lies—by attempting to create the impression that Jews in Nazi Germany . . . actually had some sort of independent cultural life of their own.”22 And yet, some scholars and former members are less forgiving of this aspect of the League’s function. As previously mentioned, this consideration is reminiscent of disagreement regarding the Judenräte, or Jewish councils. There were other Jewish bodies in Nazi-appointed positions of power with similar responsibilities, including the Council of Elders, established in Terezín to run the community. However, with Arendt’s decisive condemnation, published in her Eichmann in Jerusalem of 1963, the Jewish councils have been the focus of the debate about Jewish collaboration. This has inspired a whole new chapter in the study of the Holocaust—one that has shifted the focus from the evils of the oppressor to the “evils” of the oppressed. Somehow, the Nazis succeeded in degrading Jews all over again by making them complicit in what they could not stop. But Arendt’s early verdict did not take context fully into consideration. These councils did not act voluntarily: they were forced by the Nazis to confront unfathomable choices. If they cooperated, they helped Jews die. If they refused to cooperate, more often than not, they were either shot immediately or deported to an extermination camp. Their families suffered the same fate as a rule, which was in keeping with the regime’s idea of collective responsibility.23 The Jewish population as a whole, in Nazi policy, was jointly responsible for any

Epilogue

153

individual act of opposition. Kristallnacht, for example, was punishment for an attack by a single Jew. In this way, the Nazis ensured cooperation and suppressed resistance. The Holocaust survivor Joachim Schoenfeld explained that “if a Jew were to kill one, two, or more Nazis, he would have accomplished nothing, but only exposed others to collective punishment.”24 To many, de‹ance was reckless rather than heroic. It is amazing, in this light, that council members even debated complying with their orders. In an inaugural meeting of the Jewish council at Grodno on 28 June 1941, various leaders proposed resisting Nazi commands. Following them, they believed, could only make it easier for the regime to carry out their terrible plans for the Jewish population in occupied territories. Other leaders, who eventually prevailed, however, argued that Jewish representation would help alleviate persecution.25 Council members carried out their orders with the conviction that, if they did not, the Germans would just do the job themselves in a far more cruel and barbaric manner. Of course, a few council members did not take their job seriously—some even took advantage of their privileged status for pro‹t. But this was as it should be in the regime’s mind. In fact, by investing certain Jews with power, the SS actively encouraged antagonism among their Jewish prisoners as another means of countering the possibility of resistance.26 The majority of council members, however, struggled to wield their power for some positive end. One philosophy in this vein was to try to sacri‹ce a minority to save the majority by deporting those who might not have survived anyway—the sick, elderly, and even young children. Before we judge this rationale, it is instructive to read a speech of 4 September 1942 by council member Chaim Rumkowski, delivered in front of a large crowd in the Lodz ghetto. I was given an order yesterday evening to deport some 20,000 Jews out of the ghetto. [I was told that] if I refused, “We shall do it ourselves.” The question arose: Should we comply and do it, or should we leave it for others to do? We were not, however, motivated by the thought of how many would be lost, but by the consideration of how many it would be possible to save. We all . . . have come to the conclusion that despite the horrible responsibility, we have to accept the evil order. I have to perform this bloody operation myself; I simply must cut off limbs to save the body! I have to take away the children, because otherwise others will also be taken. . . . I did not come to console you today . . . but to reveal to you the whole woeful, torturing truth. I came like a robber to rob your dearest ones from your very hearts! With all my might I strove to repeal this evil order. And as it has

154

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany been impossible to rescind it, I have tried to make it milder. Only yesterday, I ordered the registration of children of nine years of age, because I have endeavoured to save children of at least this single age group from nine to ten. But they did not relent, and I have succeeded only in saving the ten-year-olds. . . . We have in the ghetto many persons sick with tuberculosis, whose lives are numbered in days, perhaps in weeks. I do not know—perhaps it is a satanic idea . . . but I cannot restrain myself from mentioning it. Deliver to me those sick ones and it may be possible to save the healthy ones instead. I am well aware how dear the sick are to everyone. . . . But in times of disaster one has to weigh and measure who is to be saved, who can and should be saved. To my mind, those are to be spared in the ‹rst place who have any chance of survival, not those who cannot survive anyway.27

Here we see the stark reality of the situation plainly stated. Rumkowski spoke directly and honestly to families he was forced to tear apart. What would you have done? Could you have done otherwise? In another time and place, we can never really know how we would have reacted. However, by asking these questions we confront the reality of context and at least approach the impossible ideal of objectivity. This standard can also be applied to the Jewish Culture League and the question of its collaboration with the Nazis. Most League performers had no other performance opportunities and associated income or easy possibility of emigration. Not only that, the League was formed much earlier than the Jewish councils, many years before the Nazis had even established their formal policies on the “Jewish Question.” League members had the luxury, at least in the early years, of con›ict—con›ict that in a way undermined Nazi aims for the League. As we have seen, factions within the League as well as composers complicated the goal of German music for Germans and Jewish music for Jews. The regime did successfully exploit the League as a means of propaganda and may have prevented some resistance by offering employment and spiritual escape. League performers as well as audiences supported the League and thus this exploitation of the organization. But why would they have resisted? It is easy to judge the League from hindsight, but with the road ahead unclear even to the Nazis, members of the League could not have known what end the League served. In fact, most held con›icting views about Germany’s future. Lenart, along with many others, believed that the Nazi period “was only an interlude that would soon be over,”28 and Anneliese Landau recalls that her brother-inlaw Curt was certain that “the Nazi-government would be toppled soon by nor-

Epilogue

155

mal Germans, who could not be indoctrinated with hate, and Germany would be restored to its cultural life.”29 Others believed the Nazis would at least “come to their senses and use the Jews to their advantage, in order to win the war.”30 Even those with less optimism learned to live with the Nazi specter, since there had always been anti-Semitism.31 Still, some survivors and scholars insist League members could have known if they had not been part of an organization that numbed them to the realities of Hitler’s regime. The historian Alan Steinweis, for one, wrote, “By providing Jewish artists and audiences with an outlet for creative expression, the Kulturbund rendered Jewish existence in National Socialist Germany somewhat less desperate than it otherwise might have been, thereby lulling German Jews into a tragically false sense of security about the future.”32 It is this idea that has recently inspired some of the worst criticism of the League. The theater scholar Rebecca Rovit asks, “Did their theater give its actors and audiences a false sense of reality, as if their situation were really better than it was?”33 Addressing the underlying implication more directly Goldsmith formulates the question thus: “By providing music, theater, ‹lms, lectures— above all, a sense of community—did the Kulturbund foster an atmosphere of normalcy that discouraged emigration until it became too late to consider such action? . . . Had there been no Jewish Kulturbund, would there have been fewer Jewish deaths?”34 Brandt insists the illusion was necessary and bene‹cial: “The Kulturbund was my spiritual salvation, my door to freedom. It saved us; it was our light. Yes, we had blinders on, because if we had known what was going on around us, we probably would’ve ended up in the loony bin.”35 Practically speaking, the League also provided concrete assistance for those who sought emigration. Alice Levie, the wife of Werner Levie, explains that “as long as one was employed, one could prepare for his emigration.”36 Anneliese Landau did exactly that. She had no delusions about the Nazi danger after Kristallnacht but continued to work as League musicologist until April 1939, when she was able to leave Germany. The League provided many of its artists with “Zeugnisse” or recommendation letters, enhancing their chances for work abroad and thus emigration.37 Performers “couldn’t be proud in those days,” explained Renate Lenart, Ernest Lenart’s recent widow and a former member of the League. The advantages the League created helped performers escape.38 Her husband received “wonderful parts he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise” and then “got the hell out of there.”39 Herbert Freeden thus maintained that the organization in no way hindered emigration.

156

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany Could it be that someone postponed his emigration because he could go to the opera, theater, concerts? That was naturally discussed. We came to the following conclusion: no one gave up or postponed his emigration because the Culture League existed; fundamentally it had been moral support for the Jews. That they could forget everything for an evening, that they were transported to another world, that they could hear Mahler’s Second Symphony instead of the Horst Wessel Lied—that was the greatest merit of the Culture League. The Culture League did not succeed in creating Jewish culture, but it succeeded in giving the Jewish people great spiritual help.40

Such support gave members, at many times, the strength to seek emigration, the strength to go on. For some, this power became resistance. Freeden, in fact, explained that “in its stubborn refusal to give up its bond to Europe and deny its intellectual tradition, the Kulturbund became a moral reservoir of strength for German Jews, and . . . an element of spiritual resistance.”41 But this idea of resistance, part of many Holocaust narratives, has incredible baggage. In January 1942, in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania, the young poet Abba Kovner issued this call: “Let us not be led like sheep to the slaughter.”42 After the Holocaust, survivors were admonished for failing to adequately respond to this plea. Even historians have made similar claims. In The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), Raul Hilberg argued that the Jewish population’s failure to resist was part of the Jewish experience.43 Any evidence of resistance—real or imagined—has been signi‹cant to survivors and scholars as a challenge to this claim and a way to regain lost honor. This has led to an overuse of the term resistance, prompting recent scholars to break the idea down into more speci‹c categories. Michael R. Marrus outlines four types: polemic resistance or speech against the regime; defensive resistance, which requires coming to the aid of those in danger; offensive resistance or direct combat; and symbolic resistance.44 Symbolic resistance consists “essentially of gestures, communicating a message of opposition, sometimes at great risk and sometimes not, both to occupiers and occupied.”45 This conception is related to what has been called spiritual resistance, accomplished through Jewish awakening or even assimilation, depending on the author. Through a new sense of Jewish nationalism, Eva Reichmann explains, “We thought we had conquered Hitler from within ourselves.”46 The League’s performance of Jewish music could thus fall into the category of symbolic resistance, as Philip Bohlman has argued, just as the performance of German music did for Freeden.47 The League itself could also be seen as a means of symbolic resistance more generally as a channel through which

Epilogue

157

Jewish members found comfort and “asserted solidarity in the face of persecution, the will to live, and the power of the human spirit.”48 But this function is only part of the story. In the League, as Shirli Gilbert also recognizes in her study of music during the Holocaust, music did not serve only such positive ends.49 Music was not immune to the political processes of the time. It is natural to seek meaning and hope in dark times, but it is more honest to admit the void. For some, music served no lofty goal: instead, it was a means of exclusion, a tool in the struggle of us versus them, and, as mentioned previously, a “pill” to distract. According to the testimony of Hannah Kroner, a former dancer with the League in Berlin, even Freeden—the same man who af‹rmed the League and its positive value—later contradicted himself, playing “devil’s advocate,” by raising the charge that the League distracted from the Nazi danger. Freeden had attended the 1992 Geschlossene Vorstellung exhibit and discussion of the League with former members, sponsored by the the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Kroner, also in attendance, describes Freeden’s remarks and the panel’s reaction to them. [Freeden’s] very de‹nite conclusion was, that “we were used,” “that we were misled by our own leaders into a feeling of false security,” that it was all an “illusion,” and possibly contributed to a sense of false optimism, preventing many of us from seeking emigration. All of us on the panel disagreed with that most emphatically, and so on stage all these viewpoints were expressed.50

Singer’s return to Europe after Kristallnacht suggests that if there was a sense of false optimism, the leaders of the League were not immune to it. In fact, there is evidence that Singer was under the League’s spell by 1937, when he wrote to Kurt Sommerfeld, a former musician in the Culture League, who had left the ensemble in 1936 to participate in the Palestine Orchestra. In this letter, Singer explained his reasons for trying to stop additional musicians from emigrating to join the new orchestra. It is so important at this time to try to maintain stability in our orchestra. For this reason I have urgently begged your conductor, my good friend Steinberg, to no longer place ads for musicians from here. There is no new generation of musicians for us here in Germany and I don’t want to make the work of our very talented and conscientious conductor Rudolf Schwarz unnecessarily more dif‹cult.51

158

a jewish orchestra in nazi germany

But Singer’s case, as with others who remained in Nazi Germany, was really more complicated than this explanation of delusion allows. Singer has been described as both arrogant and, yes, delusional—“convinced of his own powers to reason with the Nazis.”52 But his letters show him in a different light. After hearing news of Kristallnacht, Singer, in his own words, was “a broken man”:53 he needed the League as much as it needed him and could not imagine his life as an émigré. In his letter to Hinkel dated 8 December 1938, Singer wrote, “The Culture League without me, I without the Culture League: that is the end.”54 So Singer returned to Europe. Detained in Holland, in a letter of 12 February 1939 to Anneliese Landau, he con‹ded, “I am beginning to ‹nd my way in the world of loneliness only very slowly. Even the music itself abandoned me.”55 Alone in a new land, Singer experienced the depression and confusion many faced in emigration. Landau offers a striking example of her own disappointment once an émigré. In 1939, she left Germany and stayed with friends in London until she was able to travel to the United States. She reached Boston by boat on 1 January 1940, where she was received by a representative of the Council of Jewish Women. The representative tried to converse with her in Yiddish and was frustrated when Landau could not respond. The council woman exclaimed, “You don’t understand Jewish, what kind of a Jew are you? Are you Jewish at all?”56 This was Landau’s reception in her new home. Singer’s plight in Amsterdam was in some ways worse. He had never even decided to leave Germany. Instead, he made his way to Holland only in the hopes of returning to his beloved Fatherland. Whether or not Singer began this return trip in part because he believed Jews still had a home in Nazi Germany—a fallacy the existence of the League may have fostered—is hard to judge. What is clear is that the League was “his life’s work,” and without it, life for him was lonely and uncertain.57 So what is the legacy of this enigmatic Jewish organization, which ›ourished in the heart of Nazi Germany, and how does Singer’s own legacy ‹t within it? Should the League be seen as a means of survival, collaboration, resistance, or a distraction and hindrance to emigration and ultimately safety? Based on the memories, though fragmentary and sometimes contradictory, of former members, and Singer’s own words and actions, the League must be seen as all these things. The League served many different functions for many different people, and today it is still viewed in con›icting ways by survivors and scholars alike. Our analytical models must allow for this tension—not just as it concerns the history of events, but also the history of ideas and concepts, such as Jewish music.

Notes

Introduction 1. Jakob Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude (Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag, 1921), 126. Quote translated in Paul Bookbinder, Weimar Germany: The Republic of the Reasonable (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 195. 2. Wassermann struggled however to be recognized as both German and Jew. See Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 133–34. 3. Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743–1933 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002), 356. 4. Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 13. 5. Alan E. Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 104. 6. Niewyk, 33–35. 7. Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 79. 8. See, for example, Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany. 9. Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, 161. A. Z. Idelsohn credits the foundation of the Juwal Publishing Company to certain founders who had previously been a part of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg. Like its predecessor, the Juwal Publishing Company published a number of Jewish folk-song arrangements. See A. Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music in its Historical Development (New York: Schocken Books, 1929), 463–64. 10. See Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, 177–78. 11. Hans Gärtner, “Problems of Jewish Schools in Germany during the Hitler Regime,” Year Book, Leo Baeck Institute 1 (1956), 124. 12. Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, 59–61, 92–93. 13. Elon, 356. 14. Oded Heilbronner, “From Antisemitic Peripheries to Antisemitic Centres: The

159

160

notes to pages 3–6

Place of Antisemitism in Modern German History,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 4 (October 2000): 563. 15. Michael Brenner and Derek J. Penslar, Introduction to In Search of Jewish Community: Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria, 1918–1933, ed. Michael Brenner and Derek J. Penslar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), x. 16. See Detlev J. K. Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity, trans. Richard Deveson (London: Penguin Press, 1991), 160; and Weitz, 97, 141. 17. Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 106. See also Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 28, and Erik Levi, “Music and National Socialism: The Politicization of Criticism,” in The Nazi‹cation of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture, and Film in the Third Reich, ed. Brandon Taylor and Wilfried von der Will (Hampshire: Winchester Press, 1990), 168. 18. There were exceptions in the Berlin Philharmonic. This orchestra had over a hundred musicians, four of which were Jewish: the concertmaster Szymon Goldberg, ‹rst violinist Gilbert Back, and the two principal cellists Nicolai Graudan and Joseph Schuster. Goldberg and Schuster left Germany at the end of the 1933–34 season. But Graudan and Back remained in the Philharmonic until the summer and September 1935, respectively. See Misha Aster, “Das Reichsorchester”: Das Berliner Philharmoniker und der Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2007), 95, 101, 102–4. 19. Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 16. 20. Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 80. 21. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 42. See also Friedländer, 10. 22. Albrecht Dümling, “The Target of Racial Purity: The ‘Degenerate Music’ Exhibition in Düsseldorf, 1938,” in Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, ed. Richard A. Etlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 62. 23. Kater, 109. 24. See Kater, 86. 25. See Shirli Gilbert, Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005); John Eckhard, “Music and Concentration Camps: An Approximation,” Journal of Musicological Research 20, no. 4 (2001): 269–323; George Berkley, Hitler’s Gift: The Story of Theresienstadt (Boston: Brandon Books, 1993); and Joza Karas, Music in Terezín, 1941–1945 (New York: Beaufort Books Publishers, 1985). 26. Quoted in Dümling, 54. 27. For a more rigorous explanation of Schopenhauer’s conception of music, see Philip Alperson, “Schopenhauer and Musical Revelation,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40, no. 2 (Winter 1981): 155–66. 28. Anselm Gerhard, “Musicology in the ‘Third Reich’: A Preliminary Report,” Journal of Musicology 18, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 517–43. 29. Marian A. Kaplan, “Review: The ‘German-Jewish Symbiosis’ Revisited,” New German Critique 70 (Winter 1997): 184.

notes to pages 6–10

161

30. See Michael P. Steinberg, “Reading Charlotte Salomon,” in Reading Charlotte Salomon, ed. Michael P. Steinberg and Monica Bohm-Duchen (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 10. 31. Elon, 1, 52. 32. Thomas Pfau, “From Mediation to Medium: Aesthetic and Anthropological Dimensions of the Image (Bild) and the Crisis of Bildung in German Modernism,” Modernist Cultures 1, no. 2 (Winter 2005): 141. 33. Elon, 111–12. Schorske labels this assimilation through culture the “second stage in Jewish assimilation.” Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 149. 34. Kaplan, 186. 35. Mordechai Breuer, Modernity Within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany, trans. Elizabeth Petuchowski (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 81. 36. Elon, 82–83. 37. The term “German states” will be used to refer to all of the states that later became the nation-state of Germany. 38. Elon, 81–82. 39. Ibid., 237–39. 40. See ibid., 279–85. 41. Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, 130–42. 42. See Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 4. 43. Julius Bab, Leben und Tod des deutschen Judentums (written in Summer 1939), ed. Klaus Siebenhaar (Berlin: Argon, 1988), 106. See also Germans No More: Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933–1938, ed. Margaret Limberg and Hubert Rübsaat, trans. Alan Nothnagle (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 183. 44. Ken (Kurt) Baumann, “Memoiren,” Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 27. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 45. See Peter Jelavich, “Modernity, Civic Identity, and Metropolitan Entertainment: Vaudeville, Cabaret, and Revue in Berlin, 1900–1933,” in Berlin Culture and Metropolis, ed. Charles W. Haxthausen and Heidrun Suhr (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 96. 46. See Pamela E. Swett, Neighbors and Enemies: The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 26–27. 47. See Linda Schulte-Sasse, “Retrieving the City as Heimat: Berlin in Nazi Cinema,” in Berlin Culture and Metropolis, ed. Charles W. Haxthausen and Heidrun Suhr (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 166–86. 48. Leonard Gross, The Last Jews in Berlin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 11–14. 49. See Gärtner, 129–30. See also Heinemann Stern, “Jewish Schools as Refuges,” in Germans No More: Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933–1938, ed. Margaret Limberg and Hubert Rübsaat, trans. Alan Nothnagle (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 105–12.

162

notes to pages 10–13

50. Baumann, “Memoiren,” 28. 51. Sylvia Rogge-Gau, Die doppelte Wurzel des Daseins: Julius Bab und der Jüdische Kulturbund Berlin (Berlin: Metropol, 1999), 60. 52. Baumann, “Memoiren,” 29. Sophie Fetthauer, “Kurt Singer,” Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit, ed. Claudia Maurer Zenck and Peter Petersen (University of Hamburg), http://www.lexm.unihamburg.de/object/lexm_lexmper son_00001059. 53. Rogge-Gau, 60. Fred K. Prieberg, Musik im NS-Staat (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag), 80. 54. Herbert Freeden, “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika,” Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute 1 (1956): 145. See also Ruth Anselm-Herzog, in Henryk M. Broder and Eike Geisel, Premiere und Pogrom: der Jüdische Kulturbund 1933–1941 (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag GmbH, 1992), 86. 55. Freeden, “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika,” 145. 56. Two unpublished versions of the plan for the foundation of the League have been preserved: a handwritten plan by Kurt Baumann and a typescript rendition entitled “Plan to erect a German-Jewish Culture League with its own theater, concerts, and lectures” (“Plan zur Errichtung eines Deutsch-Jüdischen Kulturbundes mit eigenem Theater, eigenen Konzerten & Vorträgen”), which is also signed by Kurt Singer. Both drafts provide a timeline, cost and salary estimates, and organization of the different intended departments (opera, theater, concert, and lecture). The typewritten plan also begins to lay out possible repertoire choices. Copies of both versions of the plan are available in the Juedischer Kulturbund Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 57. Baumann, “Memoiren,” 32. 58. Alan E. Steinweis, “Weimar Culture and the Rise of National Socialism: The Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur,” Central European History (1991): 405–6. 59. Steinweis, “Weimar Culture and the Rise of National Socialism,” 421. 60. Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 33–35. Hinkel was born on 22 June 1901 into a Protestant bourgeois family in Worms. In October 1921, he joined the NSDAP, receiving membership number 287. He later worked as a journalist, editing the party paper Der Angriff. 61. See Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 51; Kater, 97; and Horst J. P. Bergmeier, Ejal Jakob Eisler, and Rainer E. Lotz, Vorbei . . . Beyond Recall: Dokumentation jüdischen Musiklebens in Berlin 1933–1938 . . . A Record of Jewish Musical Life in Nazi Berlin, 1933–1938 (Hambergen: Bear Family Records, 2001), 55. 62. Steinweis, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany, 51, 121. 63. See Letter from Hans Hinkel to Kurt Singer, 15 July 1933, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and “Satzung des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden,” FritzWisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Kater explains that the Nazi de‹nition of Jewish music was extended to “libretti written by Jewish authors, a strong line from the Old Testament, or the works of any Jewish or baptized Jewish composers.” Kater, 101. 64. Baumann, “Memoiren,” 45. 65. Ibid.

notes to pages 13–18

163

66. Shortly thereafter, the League was registered with the Berlin Jewish community according to a document of 25 July 1933, which states, “Hiermit melden wir den Verein ‘Kulturbund deutscher Juden’ zum Vereinregister an.” Document, 25 July 1933, Vereinsregister Berlin, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 67. Freeden, “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika,” 123. 68. Baumann, “Memoiren,” 35. 69. Charlotte Salomon, Charlotte: Life or Theater? An Autobiographical Play, trans. Leila Vennewitz (New York: Viking Press, 1981), 162. 70. Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), 297–98. 71. Hilda Klestadt Jonas (former member of the Jewish Culture League in Düsseldorf), in a conversation with the author, 8 August 2004. 72. Broder and Geisel, 287. Translated in Goldsmith, 298. 73. “Judenrat or Jewish Council,” sponsored by the Museum of Tolerance Multimedia Learning Center, http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x11/xr1189.html, (accessed 28 February 2003), 1. 74. Hannah Arendt, “From Eichmann in Jerusalem,” in The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 348. 75. Dominick LaCapra, History, Theory, Trauma: Representing the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 95. 76. Ibid., 10. 77. Alan G. Padgett, “Dialectical Realism in Theology and Science,” Perspective on Science and Christian Faith 54 (2002): 184–92, http://www.luthersem.edu/apadgett/dialec tic.htm.

Chapter 1 1. Anneliese Landau, Memoirs, donated to the author by the Landau family, 40. 2. Anneliese Landau, “Bridges to the Past” (reconstructed by Anneliese from her memories and based on letters), donated to the author by the Landau family, 39–40. 3. Ibid., 41. 4. Horst J. P. Bergmeier, Ejal Jakob Eisler, and Rainer E. Lotz, Vorbei . . . Beyond Recall: Dokumentation jüdischen Musiklebens in Berlin 1933–1938. . . A Record of Jewish Musical Life in Nazi Berlin, 1933–1938 (Hambergen: Bear Family Records, 2001), 67. 5. Ibid., 401. 6. Ibid., 53. 7. Ibid., 401. 8. Sylvia Rogge-Gau, Die doppelte Wurzel des Daseins: Julius Bab und der Jüdische Kulturbund Berlin (Berlin: Metropol, 1999), 62. Schwarz survived Auschwitz and BergenBelsen and immigrated to England, where he continued working as a conductor. See Barbara von der Lühe, “Konzerte der Selbstbehauptung: Die Orchester des Jüdischen Kulturbundes 1933–1941,” Das Orchester 44 (1996): 7, 10. See also Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 365, 385.

164

notes to pages 19–24

9. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 71. 10. Ibid., 91–93. 11. Ibid., 107–9. 12. Ibid., 73. 13. Kurt Treitler, in a conversation with the author, 21 April 2006. 14. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 69. 15. Ibid., 365. 16. Ibid., 380–81. 17. Fred K. Prieberg, Musik im NS-Staat (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, 1982), 92–93. 18. See Hugo Leichtentritt, “Das erste Konzert in der Synagoge Prinzregentenstrasse” CV-Zeitung, 26 May 1933: 6; and Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 79. 19. From the Monatsblätter des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden (November 1933), translated in Bruce H. Zortman, “Theatre in Isolation: The Jüdischer Kulturbund of Nazi Germany,” Educational Theatre Journal 24, no. 2 (May 1972): 161–62. 20. Landau, “Bridges to the Past,” 41. 21. Henryk M. Broder and Eike Geisel, Premiere und Pogrom: der Jüdische Kulturbund 1933–1941 (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag GmbH, 1992), 81–82. 22. Ibid., 81. 23. Anneliese Landau, Memoirs, 46. 24. Kurt Michaelis, in an interview with Gail Prensky, November 2003, produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project (transcript provided to the author). 25. Henry Meyer, in an interview with Martin Goldsmith, 2001, produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project (transcript provided to the author). 26. Herbert Peyser, “Germany’s Jewish Cultural League,” New York Times, 10 December 1933: 44. 27. Silvia Tennenbaum, in an interview with Gail Prensky, November 2003, produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project (transcript provided to the author). 28. Henry Meyer, in an interview with Martin Goldsmith, 2001. 29. Kurt Singer, “Zum Geleit: Fanget an!” Monatsblätter des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden 1, no. 1 (October 1933): 1. 30. Ingrid Schmidt, “‘In Wirklichkeit ist es so!’ Angestellte und Arbeiter im Jüdischen Kulturbund,” in Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933–1941, ed. Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992), 171. 31. Eva Hanau, “Die musikalischen Aktivitäten des Jüdischen Kulturbunds in Frankfurt am Main,” in Verfemte Musik: Komponisten in den Diktaturen unseres Jahrhunderts, Dokumentation des Kolloquiums vom 9–12 Januar 1993 in Dresden, ed. Joachim Braun (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993), 79–80. 32. Kurt Düwell, “Jewish Cultural Centers in Nazi Germany: Expectations and Accomplishment,” in The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to

notes to pages 24–27

165

the Second World War, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Walter Schatzberg (Hanover: Clark University, 1985), 296–98. See also “Arbeitsberichte der Kulturbünde im Reich,” in Almanach, ed. Kulturbund Deutscher Juden Berlin (Berlin: Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, 1935), 91. 33. Hanau, 80. 34. Barbara Müller-Wesemann, Theater als geistiger Widerstand: Der Jüdische Kulturbund im Hamburg 1934–1941 (Stuttgart: M und P Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1996), 79. 35. Ibid., 80. 36. In the “Geschäftsordnung für die Leitung des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden,” Singer is named the leader of the League with the responsibility for “the setting of the repertoire after discussion with individual department heads and after concert approval by the committee” (“Festsetzung des Spielplans nach Besprechung mit den einzelnen Ressortleitern und nach Zustimmung durch den Ausschuß”) and “Program formation and scheduling of special concerts” (“Programmgestaltung und Ansetzung der Sonderveranstaltungen”). “Geschäftsordnung für die Leitung des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden,” Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 37. See Waldemar Bonard, Die gefesselte Muse: das Marionettentheater im Jüdischen Kulturbund 1935–1937 (Munich: Buchendorfer Verlag, 1995). 38. Müller-Wesemann, 112–13. 39. Martin Gumpert, “A Witch Hunt under Police Supervision,” in Germans No More: Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933–1938, ed. Margaret Limberg and Hubert Rübsaat, trans. Alan Nothnagle (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 72. 40. Martha Sommer Hirsch, in an interview with Gail Prensky, November 2003, produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project (transcript provided to the author). 41. Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 299–301. 42. “Abschrift: Satzung des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden E.V.,” Vereinsregister Berlin, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Translated in Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 63. 43. Ken (Kurt) Baumann, “Memoiren,” Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 38. 44. For example, in the article “Die beiden Ziele des Kulturbündes: Zur Berliner Aufführung von ‘Nathan der Weise,’” it announced, “The other idea is and should be: to make good Germans and Europeans, which we were and want to remain, into good Jews” (“Die andere Idee ist und soll sein: die guten Deutschen und Europäer, die wir waren und bleiben wollen, zu guten Juden zu machen”). “Die beiden Ziele des Kulturbündes: Zur Berliner Aufführung von ‘Nathan der Weise,’” Israelitisches Familienblatt, 11 October 1933: 1. 45. Prieberg calls the formation of the League before the Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber) “an irony of music history” (“eine Ironie der Musikgeschichte”). Prieberg, 78. 46. Peyser, “Germany’s Jewish Cultural League,” 44. 47. Baumann, “Memoiren,” 42. 48. See Detlev J. K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and

166

notes to pages 27–30

Racism in Everyday Life, trans. Richard Deveson (New Haven: Yale University, 1987), 39; and Pamela M. Potter,“What Is ‘Nazi Music’?” Musical Quarterly 88, no. 3 (2005): 436–38. 49. Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), 298; Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 98; Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 51; Michael Meyer, The Politics of Music in the Third Reich (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 75; Bernd Sponheuer, “Musik auf einer ‘kulturellen und physischen Insel’: Musik als Überlebensmittel im Jüdischen Kulturbund 1933–1941,” in Musik in der Emigration 1933–1945. Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Rückwirkung, ed. Horst Weber (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993), 111; and Herbert Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1964), 51. 50. Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland, 51. 51. Hinkel, quoted in “Jewish Culture Safeguarded: Nazi Broadcast Claim,” Daily Telegraph, 3 August 1935, Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 52. See Albrecht Dümling, “The Target of Racial Purity: The ‘Degenerate Music’ Exhibition in Düsseldorf, 1938,” in Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, ed. Richard A. Etlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 60. 53. Dümling, 60. 54. Gregory Gilmore, “Musical and Cultural Activities inside Terezín, 1941–1945,” Music Research Forum 11, no. 1 (1996): 22–24. 55. Joza Karas, Music in Terezín, 1941–1945 (New York: Beaufort Books Publishers, 1985), 15. 56. George Berkley, Hitler’s Gift: The Story of Theresienstadt (Boston: Brandon Books, 1993), 164. 57. Ibid., 230. 58. Gerald Green, The Artists of Terezín (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 90. 59. See Kater, 98. 60. Margaret Limberg and Hubert Rübsaat, eds., Germans No More: Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933–1938, trans. Alan Nothnagle (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 17. 61. Marie Korpe, Ole Reitov, and Martin Cloonan, “Music Censorship from Plato to the Present,” in Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music, ed. Steven Brown and Ulrik Volgsten (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 239–44. 62. Baumann, “Memoiren,” 63. 63. Baumann’s Memoirs, quoted and translated in Monika Richarz, ed., Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries, trans. Stella P. Rosenfeld and Sidney Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 383. 64. Singer, in Geschlossene Vorstellung, 272. 65. “Jewish Life in Germany,” Manchester Guardian, 27 June 1935, Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 66. Quoted in Goldsmith, 122–23. In the Völkischer Beobachter (6 March 1935),

notes to pages 30–33

167

Rosenberg also called for the production of a “Jewish culture” within the League. See Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 81. 67. Alan Steinwies, Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 122. 68. Goldsmith, 125. 69. “Der Sonderauftrag für den Staatskommissar Hinkel,” Israelitisches Familienblatt, 1 August 1935: 2, translated in Goldsmith, 123. 70. Friedländer, 37, 130, 229, 254. 71. “Nazis to Control All Cultural Life,” New York Times, 9 April 1933: E1. 72. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 59. 73. See Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazi Deutschland, 48. 74. Margot Weintraub Sisman (former member of the Jewish Culture League in Berlin), in a conversation with the author, 8 December 2004. See also Baumann, “Memoiren,” 47. 75. Quoted in Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 69. Blessinger wrote his dissertation on the music of Ulm in the seventeenth century and earned his doctorate in 1913. For more information on his subsequent career, see Pamela Potter, Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 189. 76. See Peter Kivy, Authenticities: Philosophical Re›ections on Musical Performance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 3. 77. For example, see Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 11. 78. E. Taylor Atkins, “Can Japanese Sing the Blues? ‘Japanese Jazz’ and the Problem of Authenticity,” in Japan Pop! Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Timothy J. Craig (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), 32. 79. In conversation with H. Rauschning, president of the Danzig Senate: Gespräche mit Hitler (Zurich, 1940), 214. Cited in Peter Viereck, Metapolitics: From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004), 125. Wagner’s writings were also employed in schools at the time. See Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany, 148. For a more comprehensive history of anti-Semitic writing, refer to George L. Mosse’s Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1978). See also Anselm Gerhard, “Richard Wagner und der Er‹ndung des ‘Jüdischen’ in der Musik,” in Jüdische Musik? Fremdbilder—Eigenbilder, ed. Eckhard John and Heidy Zimmermann (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004), 38–40; and Pamela M. Potter, “The Concept of Race in German Musical Discourse,” in Western Music and Race, ed. Julie Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 49–62. 80. Richard Wagner, “Judaism in Music,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works: The Theater, vol. 3, trans. William Ashton Ellis (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894), 89. 81. Ibid., 82. 82. Refer to Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s chapter “The Culture In-

168

notes to pages 33–35

dustry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” in Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 120–67, which was written during World War II. Bryan Gilliam also recognizes a similarity between members of the German Right and Left, when he compares a Nazi critique of Jewish ‹lm composers with Adorno’s condemnation of Rachmaninoff, who, Adorno believed, “emptied [the musical gesture] of all content, freed it of every genuine musical event, and threw it on to the market as a commodity.” Bryan Gilliam, “A Viennese Opera Composer in Hollywood,” in Driven into Paradise, ed. Reinhold Brinkmann and Christoph Wolf (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 229–30. 83. Marcel Prawy, “Nun sei bedankt . . .”: Mein Richard-Wagner-Buch (Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1982), 47, translated in Joachim Köhler, Wagner’s Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple, trans. Ronald Taylor (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 93. 84. Karl Blessinger, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mahler: Drei Kapitel Judentum in der Musik (Berlin: Bernhard Haynefeld Verlag, 1939), 13, translated in Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 69. 85. The Nazis recognized Langbehn as one of their forerunners in the ‹rst issue of the Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte. Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), 296. 86. A discussion of Blut und Boden appears in The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, ed. Christian Zentner and Friedemann Bedürftig, trans. Amy Hackett (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 1: 92. 87. Stern, 134–47. 88. Ibid., 139. 89. Bruce Ziff and Pratima V. Rao, introduction to Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, ed. Bruce Ziff and Pratima V. Rao (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 1, 8. 90. Ralph J. Gleason, “Can the White Man Sing the Blues?” (1968), quoted in Joel Rudinow, “Race Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 127. 91. Hans Hinkel, “Die judenreine Theaterpolitik im Deutschen Reich,” Ziel und Weg 21 (1936): 587. 92. Wagner, “Judaism in Music,” 81. 93. Quoted in “Nazi Segregation of Jews: Separate Cultural Life,” Times (London), 20 August 1935, Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 94. “Aus: Reichspost, Wien vom 29, 8, 1938—‘Rettung der abendländischen Musik vor dem drohenden Verfall,’ Dr. Goebbels auf der Reichsmusikfestwoche,” Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 95. Hinkel, “Die judenreine Theaterpolitik im Deutschen Reich,” 587–88. 96. Even with a requirement that all programs be approved by a German censorship board, Shirli Gilbert makes it clear that the regulation of repertoire in the ghettos and camps was in no way consistent, instead left to local authorities. See Shirli Gilbert, Mu-

notes to pages 35–39

169

sic in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 36. 97. Gilbert, 45. 98. Karas, 15. 99. Ibid., 229. 100. Gilmore, 26–27. 101. See Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 1. 102. Koonz, 3.

Chapter 2 1. Masha Benya, in Henryk M. Broder and Eike Geisel, Premiere und Pogrom: der Jüdische Kulturbund 1933–1941 (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag GmbH, 1992), 283. 2. Peter Gay, My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin (New Haven: Yale University, 1998), 110. 3. Margot Wachsman (Kurt Singer’s daughter), in an interview with Gail Prensky, November 2003, produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project (transcript provided to the author). See also Horst J. P. Bergmeier, Ejal Jakob Eisler, and Rainer E. Lotz, Vorbei . . . Beyond Recall: Dokumentation jüdischen Musiklebens in Berlin 1933–1938. . . A Record of Jewish Musical Life in Nazi Berlin 1933–1938 (Hambergen: Bear Family Records, 2001), 53. 4. Julius Bab,“Kulturarbeit der deutscher Juden,” Der Morgen (November 1933): 326. 5. Hans Samter, “Der Kulturbund—ein Träger unserer Zukunft?” Der Schild, 26 January 1934, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 6. Mitteilungsblätter of the Jüdischer Kulturbund, Rhein-Ruhr, November 1933, quoted in Kurt Düwell, “Jewish Cultural Centers in Nazi Germany: Expectations and Accomplishments,” in The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to the Second World War, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Walter Schatzberg (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1985), 295. 7. Quoted in ibid., 302. 8. Fred K. Prieberg, Musik im NS-Staat (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag), 83. 9. See Robert Weltsch, “Introduction,” Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute 1 (1956): xxix. Here I borrow Jeffrey S. Sposato’s idea of Jewishness as a badge of shame/honor. See Jeffrey S. Sposato, “Creative Writing: The [Self-] Identi‹cation of Mendelssohn as Jew,” Musical Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 192. 10. “Tragt ihn mit Stolz, den gelben Fleck.” Translated in Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 51. 11. Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, ed. Melvyn A. Hill (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), 33–34. 12. Mark H. Gelber, Melancholy Pride: Nation, Race, and Gender in the German Literature of Cultural Zionism (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000), 1.

170

notes to pages 39–41

13. Brodnitz in “Protokoll der Tagung der jüdischen Kulturbünde Deutschlands am Sonnabend, den 27. April 1935 und Sonntag, den 28. April 1935,” Kulturbund Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 67. Brodnitz was also a committee member of the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden. 14. Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat, in Theodor Herzl’s Zionistische Schriften. Erster Teil, ed. Leon Kellner (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, n.d.), 99. 15. See Jacob Boas, “German Jewry’s Search for Renewal in the Hitler Era as Re›ected in the Major Jewish Newspapers (1933–1938),” Journal of Modern History 53, no. 1 (March 1981): 1016, 1018–19. 16. See Herbert Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, trans. William Templer (Providence: Berg, 1993), 51. 17. “Warum ‘Nathan der Weise’?” Jüdische Rundschau, 25 July 1933: 3. 18. Many German Zionists celebrated a Jewish Volk as a counterpart to the Nazi exposition of a German Volk as the basis of German culture and society. More startling, however, in hindsight, is Martin Buber’s recognition of “blood” (Blut) as the essence of Jewish identity. A Zionist student movement also developed, and one of the larger of these groups, the Wanderbund Blauweiss, was comparable to the German Wandervogel (youth movement). Stephen M. Poppel, Zionism in Germany, 1897–1933 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976), 123–35. See also Gelber, 134. 19. See Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 17–19. 20. Rosenberg, in an article in Die Spur (1920), quoted in Nicosia, 25. 21. See Faris Yahya, Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany (Beirut: Palestine Research Center, 1978), 16. 22. Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 62. See also Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine (Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books, 1999). 23. See Nicosia, 21–23. 24. See ibid., 21–24. 25. “Three Jewish Leaders Arrested in Reich,” New York Times, 25 September 1936: 15. 26. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 21. This augmented interest in Zionism is evidenced by the circulation of the Jüdische Rundschau, which blossomed after Hitler’s rise to power. 27. Zionists also viewed the play as a distraction from the realities of the Jews’ situation in Germany. See Barbara Müller-Wesemann, Theater als geistiger Widerstand: Der Jüdische Kulturbund im Hamburg 1934–1941 (Stuttgart: M und P Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1996), 339. 28. “Nathan der Weise: Die Premiere des ‘Kulturbundes,’” Jüdische Rundschau, 4 October 1933: 18. 29. Ibid. 30. See Gilya Gerda Schmidt, The Art and Artists of the Fifth Zionist Congress, 1901: Heralds of a New Age (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 8.

notes to pages 41–45

171

31. Quoted in Kalman P. Bland, The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Af‹rmations and Denials of the Visual (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 30. 32. For information on the history of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, founded by the Russian sculptor Boris Schatz (1867–1932), see Margaret Olin, The Nation Without Art: Examining Modern Discourses on Jewish Art (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 35–70. 33. “Oper im Kulturbund: ‘Figaros Hochzeit’ im Berliner Theater,” Jüdische Rundschau, 17 November 1933: 5. 34. Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, 57. 35. Ludwig Misch, “‘Figaros Hochzeit’ im ‘Kulturbund deutscher Juden,’” Israelitisches Familienblatt, 23 November 1933, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 36. “Oper im Kulturbund: ‘Figaros Hochzeit’ im Berliner Theater,” 5. 37. Ibid. 38. See Gelber, 137–60. 39. “The Work of the Jewish Culture League of Germany: Full Report of Activity Since October,” Jewish Telegraph Agency, 2 May 1934, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 40. Herbert Freeden, “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika,” Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute 1 (1956): 148. 41. Werner Levie, “Der Reichsverband,” in Pult und Bühne: Ein Almanach, ed. Reichsverband der jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland (Berlin: Joachim Goldstein Jüdischer Buchverlag, 1938), 12. 42. Sylvia Rogge-Gau, Die doppelte Wurzel des Daseins: Julius Bab und der Jüdische Kulturbund Berlin (Berlin: Metropol, 1999), 77. 43. Kurt Singer, “Allgemeine zur Gesamtlage,” 14 June 1935, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 15–16. 44. Broder and Geisel, 207. 45. Ibid., 208. 46. Singer, “Allgemeine zur Gesamtlage,” 17. 47. Friedländer, 142. 48. Letter from Singer to the “Amtsgericht Charlottenburg,” 18 May 1934, Vereinsregister Berlin, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 49. Ibid. 50. Letter from the “Amtsgericht Charlottenburg” to the League, 24 May 1934, Vereinsregister Berlin, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 51. Herbert Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1964), 55. 52. See “Protokoll der Tagung der jüdischen Kulturbünde Deutschlands am Sonnabend, den 27. April 1935 und Sonntag, den 28. April 1935,” 31. 53. Quoted in Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland, 61. 54. Nicosia, 54–55. 55. Quoted in Rogge-Gau, 89.

172

notes to pages 45–48

56. Quoted in Richard J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 31. 57. Glen W. Gadberry, “Nazi Germany’s Jewish Theatre,” Theatre Survey 21, no. 1 (May 1980): 17. 58. Quoted in “Kareski Again,” American Hebrew, 21 February 1936: 406. 59. David J. Goldberg, To the Promised Land: A History of Zionist Thought from Its Origins to the Modern State of Israel (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 204. See also Goldberg’s chapters on Jabotinsky (173–204). 60. Herbert S. Levine, “A Jewish Collaborator in Nazi Germany: The Strange Career of Georg Kareski, 1933–37,” Central European History 8, no. 3 (September 1975): 256–60. 61. “Ein Interview Kareskis im ‘Angriff,’” Selbstwehr, 3 January 1936, Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 62. Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland, 63. 63. Levine, 266. 64. “Reich Asks Inquiry on Swiss Slaying,” New York Times. 6 February 1936: 1. See also Gadberry, 22; and Ingrid Schmidt and Helmut Ruppel, “‘Eine Schwere Prüfung ist über euch’: Aspekte zur Geschichte des Jüdischen Kulturbunds,” in Geschlossene Vorstellung, ed. Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992), 39. David Frankfurter (1909–82) assassinated Swiss Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff on 4 February 1936. Frankfurter was tried and sentenced to eighteen years in prison for murder. As World War II came to a close, Frankfurter applied for a pardon, which was granted with the stipulation that he leave the country. See “Nazi’s Slayer Is Freed,” New York Times, 2 June 1945: 3. 65. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 95. 66. Daniel B. Silver, Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis (Boston: Mariner Book, 2004), 222. 67. Friedländer points out that other German Jews also viewed the Nuremburg Laws in a positive light. For example, on 19 September 1935, after the Nuremburg Laws were issued, Der Israelit, the organ of Orthodox German Jewry, expressed its support for the idea of separate education and explicitly welcomed the prohibition of mixed marriages. Friedländer, 167. 68. Michael Lawton, “Return of Jews Who Loved Mozart,” New York Times, 22 April 1992, Werner Golde Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 69. “Protokoll der Tagung der jüdischen Kulturbünde Deutschlands am Sonnabend, den 27. April 1935 und Sonntag, den 28. April 1935,” 53. 70. Quoted and translated in Freeden, “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika,” 147. 71. Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, 89. 72. “Die Kulturtagung des Reichsverbandes der Jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland,” Jüdische Rundschau, 8 September 1936: 3. 73. Kurt Singer, “Eröffnungsrede zu Beginn der Kulturtagung,” Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Transcript printed in Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933–1941, ed. Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992), 266.

notes to pages 48–50

173

74. In 1943, Arno Nadel died in Auschwitz. Stephen Stompor, Jüdisches Musik- und Theaterleben unter dem NS-Staat (Hannover: Europäisches Zentrum für Jüdische Musik, 2001), 43. 75. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 285. 76. Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 94. 77. Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Song: Some Conclusions (London: Methuen, 1954, ‹rst written in 1907), 1, 33. 78. Béla Bartók, Béla Bartók Essays, ed. Benjamin Suchoff (London: Faber and Faber, 1976), 5–6. 79. Ibid., 6. 80. The regime consistently celebrated the simplicity of the Volk by embracing works such as Julius Langbehn’s Rembrandt als Erzieher and advocating the performance and preservation of folk singing based on their Blut und Boden paradigm. See Reichsbahnzentrale fuer den Deutschen Reiseverkehr, Germany, the Land of Music (Berlin: Reichsbahnzentrale fuer den Deutschen Reiseverkehr, 1938), 12. 81. Richard Wagner, “Judaism in Music,” in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works: The Theater, vol. 3, trans. William Ashton Ellis (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894), 90. See also Esther Schmidt, “Nationalism and the Creation of Jewish Music: The Politicization of Music and Language in the German-Jewish Press Prior to the Second World War,” Musica Judaica 15 (2000–2001): 1–32. 82. Nadel in Geschlossene Vorstellung, 284. 83. Ibid., 284. 84. See Michael Brenner, “The Weimar Years (1919–1932),” Jews in Berlin, ed. Andreas Nachama, Julius H. Schoeps, and Hermann Simon, trans. Michael S. Cullen and Allison Brown (Berlin: Henschel Verlag, 2002), 154. Gilman credits Martin Buber with the creation of the positive image of the Eastern Jew. See Sander L. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986), 274–75. 85. Peter Gradenwitz, The Music of Israel: From the Biblical Era to Modern Times (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996), 284. This book is based on Gradenwitz’s The Music of Israel: Its Rise and Growth through 5,000 Years (New York: W. W. Norton, 1949). 86. Heida Hermanns Holde, “Memoirs,” Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 37–38. 87. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 284–85. See also Arno Nadel, “Jüdische Musik,” Der Jude (1923): 235. 88. Hannah Caplan and Belinda Rosenblatt, eds., International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés, 1933–1945, vol. 2 (Munich: K. G. Sauer, 1983), 845. 89. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 286. 90. “Jüdische Musik (Kunstmusik nicht Folklore) hat zu einem grossen Teil noch Bekenntnischarakter. . . . Das Gedankliche spielt bei dieser Musik eine Rolle, daher vor allem Textvertonungen. So gibt es eine Menge Chöre, Lieder; Instrumentalmusik ist weniger da.” Ibid., 286.

174

notes to pages 51–54

91. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 294. 92. Historically, scholars have given no explanation for this cultural value and simply maintained that Jewish people have an innate inclination toward poetry and song. See Bland, 21. 93. Hannah Caplan and Belinda Rosenblatt, eds., International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés, 1933–1945, 11. 94. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 289. 95. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 276. Prinz’s fate in Nazi Germany further illustrates the disjunct in Zionist and Nazi activity during the Third Reich. Although a prominent Zionist, the National Socialists arrested Prinz several times for speaking against the regime, and in July 1937, he was expelled from the country. He eventually emigrated to the United States. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 87. 96. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 289. 97. Hermann Zivi, “Gibt es eine Jüdische Musik?” Jüdischer Kulturbund Rhein-Ruhr: Mitteilungen (May 1934): 4. Translated in Düwell, 300. 98. Joachim Stutschewsky, “Gibt es eine Jüdische Musik? Jüdischer Kulturbund Rhein-Ruhr: Mitteilungen (June 1934): 3–4. Translated in Düwell, 301. 99. Quoted and translated in Düwell, 301. 100. Philip V. Bohlman, The World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine, 1936–1940: Jewish Musical Life on the Eve of World War II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 204. 101. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 95. 102. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 277. Translated in Freeden, “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika,” 149. 103. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 289. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid., 291. See Otto Benecke, “Die Kulturp›ege der Gemeinden und Gemeindeverbände,” in Handbuch der Reichskulturkammer, ed. Hans Hinkel (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Politik und Wirtschaft Gmbh., 1937), 337. 106. “Anneliese Landau: Das jüdische Kunstlied,” transcribed in Geschlossene Vorstellung, 291. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid., 291–92. 109. Ibid., 292. 110. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 294. 111. The Jewish Culture League’s “Orientierungs-Bericht,” dated February 1934, FritzWisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2. See also “Orientierungsbericht VI” (March 1934), Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 112. See the contest description in Geschlossene Vorstellung, 296–97. 113. “Zur Kulturbund-Tagung,” Jüdischer Rundschau, 11 September 1936: 4. 114. “Unter Hinkels Aufsicht: Eine Tagung des ‘Reichsverbandes juedischer Kulturbuende in Deutschland’ Den Referaten ‘von deutscher Seite nichts hinzufuegen.’ ” Pariser Tageszeitung, 11 September 1936, Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

notes to pages 54–58

175

115. Zionistische Vereinigung in Deutschland,“Für den jüdischen Kulturbund,” Jüdischer Rundschau, 16 October 1936: 3. 116. Excerpt from Oskar Guttmann, “Jewish Music and Jewish Composers in the Diaspora: I. Germany,” Musica Hebraica 1–2 (1938): 44–46. 117. Guttmann, 44–46. 118. Quoted in Bohlman, 167. 119. Boas, 1022. 120. Kurt Singer, “Der Jüdische Kulturbund Wirbt: Vorschläge,” 6 April 1937, FritzWisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1. 121. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 97–101. 122. Singer, “Der Jüdische Kulturbund Wirbt: Vorschläge,” 2. 123. Leo Grünebaum, “Jews Not Welcome in Hotels,” in Germans No More: Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933–1938, ed. Margaret Limberg and Hubert Rübsaat, trans. Alan Nothnagle (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 68–70. 124. Margaret Limberg and Hubert Rübsaat, eds. Germans No More: Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933–1938, trans. Alan Nothnagle (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 17. 125. Micha Michalowitz, “Ibsens ‘Gespenster,’” Jüdische Rundschau, 6 September 1938: 3. 126. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 105. 127. This recon‹guration was described by Werner Levie in “Aktennotiz,” 16 December 1938, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 128. Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), 195. 129. Fritz Wisten, “Bericht über die Arbeit des Jüdischen Kulturbundes in Deutschland e.V. in der Zeit von 1.9.1939–31.8.1940,” Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 4. 130. Quoted in Joseph Wulf, Musik im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation ([Reinbek b. Hamburg]: Rowohlt, 1966), 423. 131. Anneliese Landau, “Bridges to the Past” (reconstructed by Anneliese from her memories and based on letters), donated to the author by the Landau family, 48. 132. Ibid., 49. 133. Erich Katz, “Ein Komponist nimmt das Wort,” Reichsverband der Juedischen Kulturbuende in Deuschland, Mitteilungen (May 1938): 7. 134. “Nationalism,” in The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don Michael Randel (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 527. 135. Ralph Vaughan Williams, National Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935), 100. 136. Quoted in Bohlman, 17. 137. Jean-Paul Sartre insists that man cannot be reduced to an essence but instead must be understood in context—a context that shapes and forms him as an individual. He explains that “man is de‹ned ‹rst of all as a being in a situation. That means that he forms a synthetic whole with his situation—biological, economic, political, cultural, etc.

176

notes to pages 58–61

He cannot be distinguished from his situation, for it forms him and decides his possibilities; but inversely, it is he who gives it meaning by making his choices within it and by it.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. George J. Becker (New York: Schocken Books, 1948), 59–60. 138. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Re›ections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 6. 139. This idea of nation and nationality is propagated by Hobsbawm as well as Gupta and Ferguson. See Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference,” in Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 33–51. 140. “Nationalism,” The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don Michael Randel (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), 548. 141. Richard Taruskin, “Nationalism,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 16, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (New York: Grove, 2001), 689. 142. Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “Mythologies and Realities in the Study of Jewish Music,” in The World of Music, vol. 37 (1995), 34.

Chapter 3 1. Kurt Singer, “Was Ihr Wollt! (Zum Repertoire der Sommer Monate),” Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin Monatsblätter (May 1935): 2. Singer’s quotation “O Freunde . . .”, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony once again betrays his strong ties to Germany. 2. Sylvia Rogge-Gau, Die doppelte Wurzel des Daseins: Julius Bab und der Jüdische Kulturbund Berlin (Berlin: Metropol, 1999), 113. 3. Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 102. Although Mahler’s music disappeared from state-run concert halls during the Nazi era, Oliver Hilmes points out that no of‹cial ban on Mahler’s music in the Third Reich has ever come to light. Perhaps Hinkel’s employee took that as a sign of Mahler’s Germanness. Oliver Hilmes, Im Fadenkreuz: Politische Gustav-Mahler-Rezeption 1919–1945 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), 151. 4. Kurt Singer, “Unser Arbeits-Programm,” Monatsblätter Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, Berlin (December 1933): 2. 5. Madeleine Goss, Bolero: The Life of Maurice Ravel (New York: Tudor, 1940), 16. 6. “Ravel wollte keine Auffuehrungen in Deutschland,” Echo, 31 January 1938, Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 7. Joan Evans, “‘Diabolus triumphans’: Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat in Weimar and Nazi Germany,” in The Varieties of Musicology: Essays in Honor of Murray Lefkowitz, ed. John Daverio and John Ogasapian (Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2000), 182–83. 8. Evans, 183. 9. Here I rely on Jean Baudrillard’s adoption of Littré’s open-ended de‹nition of

notes to pages 62–65

177

objet as “anything which is the cause or subject of a passion.” Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict (New York: Verso, 1996), 85. 10. See Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 59–68. See also Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 154. 11. Peter van Mensch explains, “The object is selected and isolated from its original environment, and preserved. By this act or rather process it becomes a document . . . and, as such, a source of knowledge.” Peter van Mensch,“Methodological Museology; or, Towards a Theory of Museum Practice,” in Objects of Knowledge, ed. Susan Pearce (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 144. See also Peter McIsaac’s discussion of the “museum function.” Peter McIsaac, Museums of the Mind: German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 12–13. 12. See Philip Fisher, Making and Effacing Art: Modern American Art in a Culture of Museums (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). 13. See Ruth HaCohen, “Intricate Temporalities: The Trans‹guration of Proper and ‘Improper’ Sounds from Christian to Jewish Environments,” in Given World and Time: Temporalities in Context, ed. Tyrus Miller (Budapest: Central European University Press, forthcoming), 81–104. 14. See Artur Simon, ed., Das Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv 1900–2000: Sammlungen der traditionallen Musik der Welt (Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 2000); Dieter Christensen, “Erich M. von Hornbostel, Carl Stumpf, and the Institutionalization of Comparative Musicology,” in Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology, ed. Bruno Nettl and Philip V. Bohlman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 201–9; and Erich Stockmann, “Ethnomusicology in Berlin: Aspects and Perspectives,” in European Studies in Ethnomusicology: Historical Developments and Recent Trends, ed. Max Peter Baumann, Artur Simon, and Ulrich Wegner (Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 1992), 13–25. 15. Anneliese Landau, “Jewish Music and Jewish Composers in the Diaspora I. Germany: Jacob Schoenberg,” Musica Hebraica 1–2 (1938): 43–44. In 1935, Jakob Schoenberg also published a book of Hebrew songs. 16. Jakob Schoenberg, “About Jewish Music,” Jakob Schoenberg Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 1–2. 17. Ibid., 2. 18. Idelsohn died in 1938. 19. Eliott Kahn, “Heinrich Schalit and Weimar Jewish Music,” Musica Judaica 15 (2000–2001): 56. 20. In his introduction to the work, Schalit acknowledged Idelsohn when he wrote, “The modern musicological research and collection of Hebrew-Oriental ritual which has been done by A. Z. Idelsohn has given a new impetus to the further development of synagogue music.” He further hoped, like Emanuel Kirschner (1857–1938), who was opposed to German folk song in‹ltrating the Jewish liturgy, that Idelsohn’s discoveries would help eliminate the “inorganic mixture of old liturgical prayer melody with the

178

notes to pages 65–68

folk-song and chorale-like community and choral singing of 19th century Germany.” See Jehoash Hirschberg, “Heinrich Schalit and Paul Ben-Haim in Munich,” Yuval 4 (1982): 131, 138. 21. Artur Holde, Jews in Music: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Present (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), 172. 22. Arno Nadel, “Jüdische Musik,” Der Jude (1923): 235. 23. See Kahn, 58. For more information on Nadel and his own compositions, see chapter 4 of Tina Frühauf ’s The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 24. Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933–1941, ed. Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992), 270. 25. Herbert Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, trans. William Templer (Providence: Berg, 1993), 75. 26. Quoted in Friedrich Geiger, Musik in zwei Diktaturen. Verfolgung von Komponisten unter Hitler und Stalin (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 2004), 142. 27. The contest results were announced in “Jüdischer Kulturbund: Ergebnis des Preisausschreibens,” Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt, 9 May 1937, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 28. David Matthews, “Berthold Goldschmidt: A Biographical Sketch,” Tempo 144 (March 1983): 4. 29. Fred K. Prieberg, “Musik unterm Davidsstern,” in Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933–1941, ed. Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992), 125. 30. The folk song on which this movement was based also served as one of the models for the current Israeli national anthem. 31. Anneliese Landau, “Die Februar-Konzerte,” in the League Program for February 1934, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 32. Kurt Singer, “Russische Musik (Zur Eugen Onegin-Aufführung),” Monatsblätter (December 1937): 5–6, 21. 33. Lazare Saminsky, Music of the Ghetto and the Bible (New York: Bloch, 1934), 49. 34. “Kurt Singer: Die Arbeit der Jüdischen Kulturbünde—Rückschau und Vorschau,” transcribed in Geschlossene Vorstellung, 271. 35. Meyer Weisgal, . . . So Far: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1971), 120–21. 36. Letter from Werfel to Bab, 28 August 1934, Julius Bab Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. See also Guy Stern, “The Road to The Eternal Road,” in A New Orpheus: Essays on Kurt Weill, ed. Kim H. Kowalke (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 279. The Berlin Jewish community was also generally aware of the work thanks to the publication of Werfel’s entire text in the Jüdische Rundschau and the paper’s articles of 22 February 1935: “Franz Werfel: Der Weg der Verheiung” and “Die Musik zu Werfels Bibeldrama,” 9. 37. Kurt Singer, “Allgemeine zur Gesamtlage,” 14 June 1935, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 17.

notes to pages 68–70

179

38. Weisgal, 122. See also Foster Hirsch, Kurt Weill on Stage: From Berlin to Broadway (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 154. 39. Baumann’s Memoirs, quoted and translated in Monika Richarz, ed., Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries, trans. Stella P. Rosenfeld and Sidney Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 382. 40. Michael H. Kater, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 32. 41. Shabtai Petrushka, in Henryk M. Broder and Eike Geisel, Premiere und Pogrom: der Jüdische Kulturbund 1933–1941 (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag GmbH, 1992), 187. 42. Kater, Different Drummers, 40. 43. “From Long-Hair to Short: Kurt Weill Finds Satisfaction in His Transformation into a Composer of Successful Broadway Musicals,” New York Times, 23 January 1949: X3. In the article, the author stated, “During a visit to Augsburg in Bavaria in 1930, Weill went to a Nazi mass meeting at which Hitler spoke. Der Fuehrer had things to say about ‘alien in›uences’ rampant in Germany. He paid his hoarse respects to such ‘dire forces’ as Albert Einstein in science, Thomas Mann in literature, and Kurt Weill in music.” This incident is also reported in Ronald Hayman, Brecht: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 147. 44. Herbert Freeden, “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika,” Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute 1 (1956): 155. 45. Letter from the Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt (Berlin), 13 August 1935, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 46. According to Zortman, the Nazis saw the works of Brecht and Erwin Piscator in particular as “subversive.” Bruce Zortman, “Theatre in Isolation: The Jüdischer Kulturbund of Nazi Germany,” Educational Theatre Journal 24, no. 2 (May 1972): 159–68. 47. Martin Esslin, Brecht, A Choice of Evils: A Critical Study of the Man, His Work, and His Opinions (London: Methuen Drama, 1985), 55–56. 48. Ibid., 133. 49. Bertolt Brecht, Über experimentelles Theater, ed. Werner Hecht (Frankfurt: SuhrkampVerlag, 1970), 118. 50. Ibid. 51. Eva Hanau reaches a similar conclusion in her survey of the Frankfurt League’s programs and Weill’s absence therein. Eva Hanau, “Die musikalischen Aktivitäten des Jüdischen Kulturbunds in Frankfurt am Main,” in Verfemte Musik: Komponisten in den Diktaturen unseres Jahrhunderts, Dokumentation des Kolloquiums vom 9–12 Januar 1993 in Dresden, ed. Joachim Braun (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993), 82. 52. Excerpt from Baumann’s memoirs, quoted and translated in Richarz, 383. 53. Ludwig Misch, “Erinnerungen an die Zeit des nationalsozialistischen Terrors,” Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 5. 54. Text from Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Psalm 22 “Mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen,” in Drei Psalmen op.78, ed. David Brodbeck (Carus), 24–34. 55. As we will see, Hinkel’s of‹ce allowed Verdi’s Nabucco, which could be viewed as a depiction of the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany.

180

notes to pages 70–71

56. Susannah Lockwood Smith, “Soviet Arts Policy, Folk Music, and National Identity: The Piatnitskii State Russian Folk Choir, 1927–1945” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1997), 86–87. 57. Quoted in Smith, 94. Folklore was an important part of this movement, as it was to the Nazi government’s musical projects. See Smith, 95–96. See also Boris Kagarlitsky, The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present, trans. Brian Pearce (New York: Verso, 1988), 112–14. In this publication, Kagarlitsky explains that “socialist realism” was initially de‹ned in relation to literature but was later applied to painting and music. 58. Smith, 94. 59. For an informative comparison of Hitler’s and Stalin’s artistic policies, see Geiger, 137–95. Geiger recognizes that both dictators harnessed music in the service of the state, but ties the essential difference—that the Nazis did not create a prescription for art as the Soviet regime did—to a difference in the two dictators’ relationship to art. Throughout his life, Hitler was inspired by music and regarded himself as an artist, whereas Stalin was more pragmatic and viewed music as merely a tool. Geiger, 142–44. 60. “Hitler Knows and Fears Power of Music, says Anti-Nazi Composer,” Denver Post, 16 March 1935, Hanns-Eisler-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 61. Susan C. Cook, Opera for a New Republic: The Zeitopern of Krenek, Weill, and Hindemith (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988), 19. 62. Quoted in Michael H. Kater, Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 84. 63. Cook, 22. 64. Kim Kowalke, Kurt Weill in Europe (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1979), 71–73. 65. Bryan Gilliam, “Stage and Screen: Kurt Weill and Operatic Reform in the 1920s,” in Music and Performance during the Weimar Republic, ed. Bryan Gilliam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 12. 66. Siegfried Günter, “Gegenwartsoper,” quoted and translated in Cook, 22. 67. Kurt Weill,“Notiz zum Jazz,” Anbruch 11 (March 1929): 138. Translated in Kowalke, Kurt Weill in Europe, 103. 68. Horst J. P. Bergmeier and Rainer E. Lotz, Hitler’s Airwaves: The Inside Story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 6. 69. Bergmeier and Lotz, 8. See also Joseph Wulf, Presse und Funk im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation (Vienna: Ullstein, 1983), 345–46. 70. See “Dokument des Monats Juli 2002: New Tonfolie vom sogenannten ‘Volkssender’ (1935),” sponsored by Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, http://www.dra.de/on line/dokument/2002/juli.html (accessed 2 June 2006). 71. Handbuch des Deutschen Rundfunks 1939–40, quoted in Bergmeier and Lotz, 7. Hans-Joachim Weinbrenner was the editor of the Handbuch. 72. Since both the Nazis and Weimar-era composers utilized modern culture, Herf speaks of a “Nazi Sachlichkeit” in addition to a Neue Sachlichkeit, further linking the two disparate groups. See Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambrdige University Press, 1984), 220.

notes to pages 72–74

181

73. Friedrich Welter, Musikgeschichte im Umriss (Leipzig: Hachmeister und Thal, 1939), 278. Translated in Michael Meyer, The Politics of Music in the Third Reich (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 262. 74. Theo Stengel and Herbert Gerigk, Lexikon der Juden in der Musik: Mit einem Titelverzeichnis jüdischer Werke (Berlin: Bernhard Hahnefeld Verlag, 1940), 285. 75. See Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, trans. Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). 76. Helmut Kötzch, article in series of “Bekenntnisse zur neuen deutschen Musik” (1933), quoted in Jürgen Schebera, Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life, trans. Caroline Murphy (New Haven: Yale University, 1995), 204. 77. Schebera, 253. 78. Dorothy Thompson recognized a similar Nazi attitude in the area of literature. See Dorothy Thompson, “Culture under the Nazis,” Foreign Affairs 14, no. 3 (April 1936), Wiener Library Archives Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 407–8. 79. “Deutschland lebt! Die Kulturpolitische Bedeutung des Reichsparteitages,” Deutsche Kultur-Wacht, 9 September 1933: 1. 80. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,“Manifesto of the Communist Party,” authorized English translation, ed. Frederick Engels (New York: International Publishers, 1948), 28. 81. Arnold Schoenberg, “My Public (1930),” Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein and trans. Leo Black (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 96. 82. Hilda Klestadt Jonas (former member of the Jewish Culture League), in conversation with the author, 8 August 2004. 83. The other two performances of Schoenberg’s music took place in the League’s ‹rst concert season and the 1936–37 season, and featured two piano pieces and a presentation of ‹fteen poems from “Das Buch der hängenden Gärten,” respectively. 84. Jakob Schönberg, “Ein Vortrag über Arnold Schönberg,” Jüdische Rundschau, 14 September 1934: 9. 85. Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), 78. 86. Schoenberg, the second of his “Two Speeches on the Jewish Solution” (1935), in Style and Idea, 504. 87. Kater, The Twisted Muse, 110. 88. Alexander L. Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 18. 89. Allen Shawn, Arnold Schoenberg: Journey (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002), 193. 90. Arnold Schoenberg, “National Music (2),” in Style and Idea, 173. 91. Quoted in David M. Schiller, Bloch, Schoenberg, and Bernstein: Assimilating Jewish Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 76. 92. “Anneliese Landau: Das jüdische Kunstlied,” transcribed in Geschlossene Vorstellung, 293. In September 1934, in honor of Schoenberg’s sixtieth birthday, Hans Nathan similarly endeavored to familiarize the public with Schoenberg through an instructive

182

notes to pages 74–76

lecture. Jakob Schönberg reported on the lecture in “Ein Vortrag über Arnold Schönberg,” Jüdische Rundschau, 14 September 1934: 9. 93. Anneliese Landau, “Arnold Schönberg Zum 60 Geburtstag,” Der Morgen (September 1934): 320. 94. A. Landau, “Arnold Schönberg Zum 60 Geburtstag,” 321. 95. Anneliese Landau, The Contribution of Jewish Composers to the Music of the Modern World (Cincinnati: National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 1946), 34. 96. Lazare Saminsky, “Hebrew Song Lives in Modern Music,” Musical America 41, no. 4 (14 November 1924): 9. 97. Quoted in Ringer, 192. See also A. Idelsohn’s “My Life: A Sketch,” Yuval 5 (1986): 21. 98. Bloch’s letter (emphases are Bloch’s), quoted in Klára Móricz, “Jewish Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Art Music” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1999), 20. 99. See Ernest Bloch’s “Man and Music,” Musical Quarterly 19, no. 4 (October 1933): 374–81, reproduced in Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music, ed. Elliott Schwartz and Barney Childs (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 41. 100. Quoted in Schwartz and Childs, 42. In his “Ten Principles of German Music Creativity” (1938), Joseph Goebbels similarly proclaimed, “Like every other art, music also arises from mysterious and profound powers, which are rooted in the national character.” See Albrecht Dümling, “The Target of Racial Purity: The ‘Degenerate Music’ Exhibition in Düsseldorf, 1938,” in Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, ed. Richard Etlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 62. 101. “Protokoll der Tagung der jüdischen Kulturbünde Deutschlands am Sonnabend, den 27. April 1935 und Sonntag, den 28. April 1935,” Kulturbund Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 73. 102. Hanau, 83. 103. “Hans Nathan: Jüdische Orchester- und Kammermusik,” transcribed in Geschlossene Vorstellung, 287. 104. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 292. 105. Monatsblätter des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden (November 1935), Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 21. 106. “. . . dann aber freute man sich auch darauf, einmal einen systematischen Querschnitt durch die jüdische Musik unserer Tage zu erhalten und so selbst prüfen zu können, ob es denn wirklich eine ‘jüdische’ Musik, also eine Tonkunst unter einheitlichen jüdischen Stilmerkmalen, gibt.” “Jüdische Musik unserer Zeit: Zur 6. Veranstaltung der Stuttg. Jüd. Kunstgemeinschaft,” Israelitische Gemeinde-Zeitung, 1 June 1936, Karl Adler Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 107. See, for example, Arno Nadel’s positive review of Bloch’s Piano Trio (10 May 1934). Arno Nadel, “Ernest Bloch—Konzert,” Jüdische Rundschau, 10 May 1934: 13. Translated in Schiller, 58. In the following months after this review, Bloch expressed his thanks to Nadel for Nadel’s admiration of his work. Letter to Arno Nadel in Berlin, 12 August 1934, Ernest Bloch Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

notes to pages 76–79

183

108. Jewish Culture League program for 1936 concert featuring Bloch’s Concerto Grosso, Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 109. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 284. 110. Saminsky, “Hebrew Song Lives in Modern Music,” 9. 111. The title of the work is in reference to Israel of Miedzibiz (1700–1760), the father of the Hassidic movement, who was renowned as the Baal Shem Tov, or “Master of the Good Name.” David Z. Kushner, The Ernest Bloch Companion (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 56. 112. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 285. 113. Móricz, Jewish Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Art Music, 368–69. 114. Quoted and translated in ibid., 370–71. 115. Ibid., 370. 116. David Z. Kushner, “The ‘Jewish’ Works of Ernest Bloch,” Journal of Musicological Research (1981): 264. 117. See Kushner, “The ‘Jewish’ Works of Ernest Bloch,” 260–61; and Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later NineteenthCentury, trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 186. 118. Peter Kivy, Authenticities: Philosophical Re›ections on Musical Performance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 3. 119. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 289. 120. Bloch quoted in Musica Hebraica, vol. 1–2 (1938): 12. 121. Mary Tibaldi Chiesa, “Ernest Bloch—The Jewish Composer,” Musica Hebraica, vol. 1–2 (1938): 13. 122. Letter of 16 July 1911 in Suzanne Bloch and Irene Heskes, Ernest Bloch, Creative Spirit: A Program Source Book (New York: Jewish Music Council of the National Jewish Welfare Board, 1976), 44. 123. Quoted in Móricz, “Jewish Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Art Music,” 270–71. 124. Móricz, “Jewish Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Art Music,” 264. 125. Olin Downes, “Ernest Bloch in the Academy: Recognition for a Great Composer Who Has Made Home Here—His Music Deserves More Attention from Performing Artists,” New York Times, 3 May 1942: X7. Olin Downes’s negative judgment of Bloch’s America corresponds to Carl Dahlhaus’s observation: “The only logical conclusion to be drawn from the Herderian thesis of the creativity and active historical in›uence of the ‘Volksgeist’ is that the seal of aesthetic legitimacy and authenticity can be conferred solely when the composer uses the folk music of his own nation.” Dahlhaus, 100. 126. Quoted in John Clapham, “Dvorák and the American Indian,” in Dvorák in America, 1892–1895, ed. John C. Tibbets (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1993), 117. 127. Rodney Livingstone explains in a footnote that the term phantasmagoria was ‹rst employed in 1802 in the context of an exhibition of optical illusions. In Adorno’s writing, however, the author seizes on the negative connotations of the word, which stem from Marx’s use of the term to describe “commodity fetishism” and the “conceal-

184

notes to pages 79–80

ment of the fact that the commodity is the product of human labor.” In this vein, Adorno criticized the work of Wagner, who he believed hid “the underlying forces or conditions of its production.” He wrote, “Wagner’s operas tend toward magic delusion, to what Schopenhauer calls ‘The outside of the worthless commodity’, in short towards phantasmagoria.” Theodor W. Adorno, In Search of Wagner, ed. Rodney Livingstone (New York: Verso, 1991), 85. 128. Stengel and Gerigk, Lexikon der Juden in der Musik, 34. 129. Hanau makes this point in “Die musikalischen Aktivitäten des Jüdischen Kulturbunds in Frankfurt am Main,” 83. 130. Letter from Bloch to Landau, 10 August 1946, Anneliese-Landau-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. The underlining is present in Bloch’s original letter. 131. Program notes for the Jewish Culture League’s performance of Bloch’s Sacred Service on 25 June 1934, Juedischer Kulturbund Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 4. 132. Quoted in Barbara Müller-Wesemann, Theater als geistiger Widerstand: Der Jüdische Kulturbund im Hamburg 1934–1941 (Stuttgart: M und P Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1996), 243. 133. The program from the Hamburg League concert of 21 April 1936 stated, “To suit the religious character of the Blochian work, we ask our audience to listen to it with a head covering” (“Dem religiösen Charakter des Bloch’schen Werkes entsprechend, bitten wir unsere Zuhörer, dasselbe mit Kopf bedeckung anzuhören”). Program, 21 April 1936, Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 134. “Wir glaubten zu wissen, da nicht Autor und Stoff, nicht Thema und Gesinnung, nicht Form und Gestaltung das Wesen einer spezi‹sch jüdischen Kunst ausmacht, sondern das in der Sprache verankerte Heimatgefühl.” Pult und Bühne: Ein Almanach, ed. Reichsverband der Jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland (Berlin: Joachim Goldstein Jüdischer Buchverlag, 1938), 4. 135. As the “juice of life,” Herder believed language in the form of German legends, sagas, and ancient poetry engaged the spiritual roots of the Volk. This emphasis upon language was common to a whole generation of philologists by the end of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One important work in this vein was Sessa’s Our Visitors (Unser Verkehr, 1816), which focused on the Jews’ inability to speak German properly. In this way, language was used as a test of assimilation and a means to stigmatize strangers. Refer to George L. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 38. 136. Richard Wagner, “Judaism in Music,” trans. William Ashton Ellis, reprinted from The Theatre, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. 3, trans. William Ashton Ellis (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894), 84. 137. Ernest Bloch, “My Sacred Service” (a transcript of a lecture presented at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on 16 September 1933), Ernest Bloch, Creative Spirit: A Program Source Book, ed. Suzanne Bloch and Irene Heskes (New York: Jewish Music Council of the National Jewish Welfare Board, 1976), 12.

notes to pages 80–83

185

138. Schiller, 21. 139. Max Weber, The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans. and ed. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel, and Gertrude Neuwirth (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958). Max Weber (1864–1920) was born in Berlin. The Rational and Social Foundations of Music was ‹rst published in 1921. 140. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 3. 141. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 284–85. 142. Quoted in Ringer, 195. 143. Ralph P. Locke, “On Music and Orientalism,” Music, Culture, and Society, ed. Derek B. Scott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 104. See also Derek B. Scott, “Orientalism and Musical Style,” Musical Quarterly 82, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 309–35. 144. Program notes for the Jewish Culture League’s performance of Bloch’s Sacred Service on 25 June 1934, 4, 6. 145. See Dahlhaus, 83–84, 88–90. Bloch’s use of the motive GACBAG may have also been part of his universal aspirations. The ‹rst four notes of the motive, GACB, transposed to CDFE, were used by Mozart in the ‹rst violin’s initial four bars in the Finale of the Jupiter Symphony (K.551) and appeared throughout that movement. See Klára Móricz, Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 178. The four-note motive was also utilized by Bach, Froberger, Mendelssohn, and Handel, to name only a few. For a more complete listing of composers who utilized this motive, see Manfred Wagner, “Einführung und Analyse,” in Mozart Sinfonie C-Dur: KV 551 “Jupitersinfonie” (Mainz: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1979), 135. 146. Yale Strom gives the following scale as an example of the Ahavah Rabbah mode: E-F-G -A-B-C-D -E. Yale Strom, The Book of Klezmer: The History, the Music, the Folklore (Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2002), 122. Though the use of this mode has been taken as evidence of the Jewishness of Bloch’s piece, Móricz points out that it is not related to the biblical modes and was one of the initial targets of Reform Judaism’s attempts to cleanse synagogue music. See Klára Móricz, “Jewish Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Art Music,” 286. 147. As recent as 2001, Knapp and Draughon cited the augmented second as particularly Jewish. Francesca Draughon and Raymond Knapp, “Gustav Mahler and the Crisis of Jewish Identity,” Echo: A Music-Centered Journal 3, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 9. Idelsohn also recognized the interval’s association with Jewish music, especially the music of Ernest Bloch.“Ernest Bloch’s music is designated ‘Jewish.’ Its Jewishness, however, consists in an abundance of augmented steps, and, according to the opinion of some, in a certain heavy melancholy.” He rightly points out, however, that “these characteristics are NOT exclusively Jewish, for all the Semitic and Tartarian peoples have the same characteristic step . . .” A. Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music: In Its Historical Development (New York: Henry Hold, 1924), 471. 148. Michael B. Beckerman, New Worlds of Dvorák: Searching in America for the Composer’s Inner Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 18.

186

notes to pages 84–88

149. A statement from a letter from Bloch to Lillian Hodgehead dated 6 April 1934, quoted in Klára Móricz, “The Con‹nes of Judaism and the Illusiveness of Universality in Ernest Bloch’s Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service),” 203–4.

Chapter 4 1. Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3: The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 124. 2. See Jerold Levinson, Music in the Moment (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1997), 60–61; James L. Mursell, The Psychology of Music (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1964), 216–17; and David J. Hargreaves, The Developmental Psychology of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 111. Hargreaves proposes an inverted-U representation of the relationship between familiarity and enjoyment. That is to say, with repeated hearings, a listener’s enjoyment of a given piece will typically increase steadily until he or she becomes overexposed to the piece. At this point, enjoyment will steadily decrease. 3. Roland Barthes called Lieder “the starting point of a wound, of a nostalgia.” Quoted in Lawrence Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 143. 4. Quoted in Richard J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 15. Elon similarly states, “[The Jews’] true home, we now know, was not Germany but German culture and language.” Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743–1933 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002), 9. 5. Sander L. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 309. See also Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 57. 6. In fact, somewhat less than 6 percent of German Jews had even a basic knowledge of Hebrew. Gilman, 311. 7. “Three Jewish Leaders Arrested in Reich,” New York Times, 25 September 1936: 15. 8. Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933–1941, ed. Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992), 296–97. Refer also to Herbert Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1964), 85. 9. Kravitt explains that in the ‹rst half of the nineteenth century Lied was not performed in public. Yet it was a favorite in concerts given in private homes. According to Emelie Bittener, “Lieder ‹tted particularly well into the atmosphere of the intimate social gatherings.” Quoted in Edward F. Kravitt, The Lied: Mirror of Late Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 20. 10. Alice M. Hanson, Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 114. For information on Fanny Arnstein’s familial ties to Mendelssohn, see R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 10–13.

notes to pages 89–90

187

11. Charles Seals‹eld, an Austrian exile formerly known as Karl Postl, wrote about Vienna’s repression in a notorious tract on the city published in 1828. See Leon Botstein, “Realism Transformed: Franz Schubert and Vienna,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 22; and Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun, “The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons,” in Jewish Women and Their Salons: The Power of Conversation, ed. Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun (New Haven: Yale University, 2005), 24–35. 12. See Leon Botstein, “Music, Femininity, and Jewish Identity: The Tradition and Legacy of the Salon,” in Jewish Women and Their Salons: The Power of Conversation, ed. Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun (New Haven: Yale University, 2005), 159–69. See also Mark H. Gelber, Melancholy Pride: Nation, Race, and Gender in the German Literature of Cultural Zionism (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000), 32–33. Gelber explains that these turn-of-the-century cultural evenings in Vienna and Berlin were also an important part of Cultural Zionist activity and included poetry readings, music, and song, as well as political or cultural speech. 13. Hilda Klestadt Jonas (former member of the Jewish Culture League in Düsseldorf), in a conversation with the author, 8 August 2004. 14. See the collected programs in Geschlossene Vorstelling, 376–425. 15. Henry Meyer, in Henryk M. Broder and Eike Geisel, Premiere und Pogrom: der Jüdische Kulturbund, 1933–1941 (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag GmbH, 1992), 142. Anneliese Landau also argued that Hausmusik was important in general to Jewish communities in Germany historically and in Nazi Germany, “in a sense recreating musical communities within Jewish society.” Quoted in Philip V. Bohlman, The World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine, 1936–1940: Jewish Musical Life on the Eve of World War II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 91. 16. Anneliese Landau, “Bring Musik ins Haus: Notwendigkeit und Wert der Hausmusik,” CV-Zeitung, 22 May 1936: 7. 17. “Kulturarbeit in allen Teilen des Reiches,” CV-Zeitung, 26 October 1933: 9. See also Micharl Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 100, 103. 18. Quoted in Volker Dahm, “Kulturelles und geistiges Leben,” in Die Juden in Deutschland 1933–1945: Leben unter nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft, ed. Wolfgang Benz (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988), 132. 19. See Kramer, 146–47. 20. Hans Nathan felt these tastes were “further approaching the views of the earlier Furtwängler audience” (“die Anschauungen des früheren Furtwängler-Publikums weiter nährte”). Geschlossene Vorstellung, 288. According to Ronald Taylor, Furtwängler was devoted to the Classical tradition and “viewed music from a ‹rm nineteenth-century platform of Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, and Brahms.” Ronald Taylor, introduction to Furtwängler on Music: Essays and Addresses, ed. and trans. Ronald Taylor (Aldershot, England: Scholar Press, 1991), xi–xii. 21. Anneliese Landau praised Mahler at the Jewish Culture League Conference. See

188

notes to pages 91–92

Geschlossene Vorstellung, 292; see also Ludwig Landau, “Das jüdische Element bei Gustav Mahler (Zum 25. Todestage—18. Mai 1936),” Morgen (May 1936): 67–73. 22. In the League’s second and third years, there were concerts devoted speci‹cally to settings of Heine’s texts. Although he was popular, the degree of his popularity is dif‹cult to assess since many programs collected in Geschlossene Vorstellung simply list Lieder without further details about text or title. 23. Friedrich Welter, Musikgeschichte im Umriss (Leipzig: Hachmeister und Thal, 1939), 184. See also Michael Meyer, The Politics of Music in the Third Reich (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 274. 24. Wolfgang Boetticher, Robert Schumann: Einführung in Persönlichkeit und Werk (Berlin: Bernhard Hahnefeld Verlag, 1941), 186. See also Meyer, The Politics of Music in the Third Reich, 269. Despite traits that harmonized with nationalistic thinking during the Third Reich, there were dif‹culties with which Nazi musicologists had to contend in the case of Schumann, such as the composer’s mental illness and relationship to Mendelssohn. See my forthcoming article “Segregating Sound: Robert Schumann in the Third Reich,” in Rethinking Schumann, ed. Roe-Min Kok and Laura Tunbridge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 25. Christopher H. Gibbs surmises this upbringing was “fairly oppressive.” Gibbs, The Life of Schubert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 54. 26. Ibid., 45. 27. Quoted in Brian Newbould, Schubert: The Music and the Man (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 71. 28. John Reed, Schubert (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), 40. See also John Gingerich, “‘To how many shameful deeds must you lend your image’: Schubert’s Pattern of Telescoping and Excision in the Texts of His Latin Masses,” Current Musicology 70 (Fall 2000): 61–99; Glenn Stanley, “Schubert’s Religious and Choral Music: Toward a Statement of Faith,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 207–23; and Walther Dürr, “Schubert’s Treatment of the Liturgical Mass Text,” in Goethe and Schubert: Across the Divide, ed. Lorraine Byrne and Dan Farrelly (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2003), 214–33. 29. Gibbs, The Life of Schubert, 55. 30. Frank Ruppert, Schubert and the Spiritual Ascent (unpublished). Quoted in Newbould, Schubert: The Music and the Man, 130. 31. Elaine Brody, “Schubert and Sulzer Revisited: A Recapitulation of the Events Leading to Schubert’s Setting in Hebrew of Psalm XCII, D 953,” in Schubert Studies: Problems of Style and Chronology, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda and Peter Branscombe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 60. Except for Latin sacred pieces and Italian songs, Schubert’s vocal works are all in German, making this piece unique. 32. Brody, 47. 33. Joshua R. Jacobson, “Franz Schubert and the Vienna Synagogue,” Choral Journal 38, no. 1 (August 1997): 13. A turn ‹gure appears in bars 9, 10, 14, and 76, which is unusual within Schubert’s oeuvre and reminiscent of the turning ‹gure in Der Leiermann, which Jonathan Bellman uses to connect the piece to the music of the East. Jonathan Bellman,

notes to pages 92–95

189

The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe (Boston: Northeastern Press, 1993), 156. 34. Kai, “Konzerte und Vorträge in Berlin und im Reich,” CV-Zeitung, 5 March 1936: 4. 35. Ludwig Misch, “Erinnerungen an die Zeit des nationalsozialistischen Terrors,” Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 4. 36. Horst J. P. Bergmeier, Ejal Jakob Eisler, and Rainer E. Lotz, Vorbei . . . Beyond Recall: Dokumentation jüdischen Musiklebens in Berlin 1933–1938 . . . A Record of Jewish Musical Life in Nazi Berlin, 1933–1938 (Hambergen: Bear Family Records, 2001), 362. 37. Kai, 4. 38. Eric Mandell, “Salomon Sulzer, 1804–90,” in The Jews of Austria: Essays on Their Life, History and Destruction, ed. Joseph Fraenkel (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1967), 221. The importance of Sulzer and Schubert’s relationship and impulse to commemorate their alliance endured well into the 1970s with the establishment of the annual Hermann Prey Schubert festival in Hohenems, Austria, Sulzer’s birthplace. Psalm 92 was performed at this festival in the summers of 1976 and 1977. See Reinhard van Hoorickx, “Schubert and the Bible,” Musical Times 119 (November 1978): 953, and Brody, 57. Hanoch Avenary credits the impulse to commemorate the relationship between Schubert, Sulzer, and Hohenems since the 1970s to the initiative of Walter Pass. See Hanoch Avenary, ed., Kantor Salomon Sulzer und seine Zeit: Eine Dokumentation (Hohenems, Austria: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1985), 192. 39. A. W. Binder, Studies in Jewish Music: Collected Writings of A. W. Binder, ed. Irene Heskes (New York: Bloch, 1971), 74. Binder also describes Schubert as Sulzer’s close friend (284), as does Aron Marko Rothmüller, in his The Music of the Jews: An Historical Appreciation (New York: Beechhurst Press, 1954), 104. The League performed two compositions by Aron Marko Rothmüller, and he is mentioned in a speech at the Jewish Culture League Conference. See Geschlossene Vorstellung, 290. 40. Artur Holde, Jews in Music: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Present (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), 17–18. 41. See Malcolm Miller, “Salomon Sulzer: A Centenary Observed,” Musical Times 132, no. 1775 (January 1991): 730. 42. Thomas Eisner, “Fritz Busch: A Friend Remembered,” Musical Quarterly 85, no. 3 (2001): 458. See also Kater, The Twisted Muse, 120–25. See also Prieberg, 41–42. 43. “Statements of Faith,” New York Times, 22 March 1942: X7. The underline was added in the third line of the quote by the author. 44. Eduard Birnbaum, “Franz Schubert as a Composer of Synagogue Music—Translated from Allgemeinzeitung des Judentums, 1898,” in Contributions to a Historical Study of Jewish Music, ed. Eric Werner ([New York]: Ktav Publishing, 1976), 91–103. Birnbaum was born in 1855 and became a composer, scholar, and longtime cantor in Koenigsberg. 45. Stadler (1748–1833) was a Benedictine monk at Melk, Austria. He settled in Vienna in 1796. Schubert slightly altered Stadler’s melody, harmony, and rhythm (Hoorickx, 954). 46. K. H. Strange and R. G. E. Sandbach, Psalm Twenty-Three: An Anthology (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1969), 18.

190

notes to pages 96–98

47. In the German rendition of the psalm, which Schubert set, the familiar du is used when the speaker addresses God, further emphasizing the comfort of this ‹nal sanctuary: “Er führt mich auf gerechtem Steige zu seines Namens Ruhm. Und wall’ ich auch im Todesschaten Thale, so wall’ ich ohne Furcht, denn du beschützest mich.” Text of Franz Schubert’s “Der 23. Psalm,” in Complete Works: Breitkopf and Härtel Critical Edition of 1884–1897, vol. 12 (New York: Dover, 1995). For translation, see “The Lord Is Our Shepherd,” http:///www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1965 (accessed 11 August 2006). 48. See R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 56. 49. Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, 469, and Lily E. Hirsch, “Felix Mendelssohn’s Psalm 100 Reconsidered,” Philomusica (2004/2005), http://philomusica.unipv.it/am ate/2004-5/saggi/hirsch/index.html. 50. “Man hat sich oft gefragt, weshalb Schubert wohl für diesen Psalm auf Moses Mendelssohns deutsche Übersetzung zurückgegriffen hat, die doch eigentlich für die jüdischen Gemeinden—wenn auch nicht unmittelbar für die Synagogen—bestimmt war.” Walther Dürr, “Gott ist mein Hirte (D 706): Schuberts Vertonung des 23. Psalms in der Übersetzung von Moses Mendelssohn,” Württembergische Blätter für Kirchenmusik 57, no. 5 (1990): 172. 51. Dürr, 172. 52. This work may have been intended for Schubert’s concert of 26 March 1828, which consisted entirely of his own compositions. Brown concludes that its exclusion from the event suggests that it was not ready in time. Maurice J. E. Brown, Schubert: A Critical Biography (London: Macmillan, 1958), 283–84. 53. See David B. Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics, 1870–1989 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 19. 54. Christopher H. Gibbs, “ ‘Poor Schubert’: Images and Legends of the Composer,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 37. 55. Gibbs, “‘Poor Schubert’: Images and Legends of the Composer,” 46. 56. Quoted and translated in Franz Schubert, Franz Schubert’s Letters and Other Writings, ed. Otto Erich Deutsch and trans. Venetia Savile (New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1928), 24. 57. Popular ‹lm versions of Berté’s operetta also spread the image of Schubert as neglected and meek. See Gibbs, The Life of Schubert, 19–20. 58. Alexander Stillmark, “‘Es war alles gut und erfüllt.’ Rudolf Hans Bartsch’s Schwammerl and the Making of the Schubert Myth,” The Biedermeier and Beyond, ed. Ian F. Roe (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 230. 59. Gibbs recognizes this phrase (zu früh verblichener geniale Tonsetzer) as the most common phrase in works appearing in the decade following Schubert’s death. Gibbs, “‘Poor Schubert’: Images and Legends of the Composer,” 43. 60. Oscar Bie, Schubert, the Man, trans. Jean Starr Untermayer (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1928), 1. 61. The symphony was written in 1825 and 1826 but revised before August 1827, when

notes to pages 98–101

191

the orchestral parts were created. See Paul Badura-Skoda, “Possibilities and Limitations of Stylistic Criticism in the Dating of Schubert’s ‘Great’ C Major Symphony,” in Schubert Studies, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda and Peter Branscombe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 187. 62. Anneliese Landau, “Beginn der 2. Konzertwinters,” in the League’s program of October 1934, Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 8. 63. See L. Michael Griffel, “Schubert’s Orchestral Music: ‘Striving after the Highest in Art,’” in The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 204. 64. Anneliese Landau, Speech, Anneliese Landau Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2. 65. Ibid., 3. 66. Antonio Baldassarre, “The Iconographic Schubert: The Reception of Schubert in the Mirror of His Time.” RIDIM/RCMI (Fall 1997): 49. 67. Speech held in the Anneliese Landau Archiv, 4–5. 68. John Reed, The Schubert Song Companion (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 466. 69. Speech held in the Anneliese Landau Archiv, 5. 70. “Schuberts Lied, Vortrag im Kulturbund,” CV-Zeitung, 16 November 1933: 6. 71. Wolfgang Stühr credits the inception of Die Winterreise to Wilhelm Müller’s fascination with the ‹gure of the eternal Jew and his knowledge of William Wordsworth’s “Song of the Wandering Jew.” Refer to Wolfgang Stühr, “Ahasverus, Zum Leben Verurteilt: Der Ewige Jude, der ›iegende Holländer, der Fahrende Geselle,” in Mythen in der Musik: Essays zu den Internationalen Musikfestwochen Luzern (Lucerne: Sticher Printing AG, 1999), 80, 72. 72. Bellman, 156. 73. “Und er lässt es gehen alles, wie es will, dreht, und seine Leier steht ihm nimmer still; Wunderlicher Alter, soll ich mit dir geh’n?” See text in Franz Schubert, Complete Song Cycles: Die schöne Müllerin, Die Winterreise, Schwanengesang, 209. 74. Jakob Schoenberg, “Hauskonzert,” Jüdische Rundschau, 30 October 1934, 11. 75. “Der Wanderer” was set to a poem by Georg Philipp Schmidt von Lübeck, who achieved fame for this single poem, published in 1808 under the title Des fremdlings Abendlied (“The Stranger’s Evening Song”). The poem encapsulates a romantic yearning particularly ‹tting of the League member’s situation, especially as the Wanderer longs for a land of his own. See the translation of the poem and subsequent description in Reed, The Schubert Song Companion, 137. 76. Stephen Davies explains, “we can imagine that the emotions expressed in the music are the composer’s and thereby achieve a feeling of communion with the emotions of another.” Stephen Davies, “Why Listen to Sad Music If It Makes One Feel Sad?” in Music and Meaning, ed. Jenefer Robinson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 243. 77. “Das Berliner Kulturbundorchester in Hamburg,” Hamburger Familienblatt, 29 November 1934, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 78. Anneliese Landau, “Die Dezember-Konzerte,” in the Program of December 1933

192

notes to pages 101–2

to accompany the League’s performance of Othello, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 14. Richard Taruskin made a similar observation in his discussion of the solitary I at work in Schubert’s music, versus the big We of romantic nationalism. Taruskin identi‹ed this I not only in Schubert’s Lieder but also in his sonatas and symphonies, which avoid the struggle evident in Beethoven’s works and favor instead predictable tonal and thematic closures that offer “serene satisfaction” rather than “strenuous grati‹cation.” See Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, 63, 86. 79. See Gibbs, The Life of Schubert, 186–87. 80. Jerold Levinson, “Music and Negative Emotion,” in Music and Meaning, ed. Jenefer Robinson (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 230. 81. Levinson, “Music and Negative Emotion,” 230. 82. Bryan Gilliam, “The Annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi Revisionism and the Politics of Appropriation,” Musical Quarterly 78, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 584. 83. Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 52. 84. Letter to the “Kreis I der NSDAP zu Händen der Propagandaleiters Pg. Hickethier” (Berlin-Spandau) from the Berlin Charlottenburg Propaganda-Amt, 19 November 1934, Document 575, Wiener Library, London, 1–2. 85. “An die ferne Geliebte” was crossed out in a section of texts forbidden to the League, held in Document 575, Wiener Library, London. The Nazi musicologist Karl Blessinger attempted to distance Beethoven from Jeitteles by dismissing the verses as a mere “stylistic exercise” (“Stilübung”), and thus “without in›uence over the overall character of the music” (“ohne Einglu auf den Gesamtcharakter des Zyklus”). Karl Blessinger, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mahler: Drei Kapitel Judentum in der Musik (Berlin: Bernhard Haynefeld Verlag, 1939), 47. 86. Käthe Mende identi‹ed this tendency, which she learned from the League’s central of‹ce, in a letter to the singer Käte Fischer over an upcoming performance of their “Musikgruppe des jüdischen Frauenband.” Mende did express some confusion as to whether or not the exception only applied to Lieder or could also be applied to opera: “Es ist mir freilich nicht ganz klar, ob die Zulassung infolge eines jüdischen Textdichters sich nur auf Lieder, oder auch auf ganze Opera bezieht . . .” Letter from Käthe Mende to Käte Fischer, 1 August 1937, Centrum Judaicum Archiv, 1, 75C FR 1, Nr. 28, 9832, Berlin. 87. Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher 1924–1945, 1: Einfürung 1924–1929, ed. Ralf Georg Reuth (Munich: Piper, 1999), 121. Translated in Guido Heldt, “Hardly Heroes: Composers as a Subject in National Socialist Cinema,” in Music and Nazism: Art under Tyranny, 1933–1945, ed. Michael H. Kater and Albrecht Riethmüller (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2003), 118. 88. The Nazi propagandist and musicologist Walther Vetter, for one, described Beethoven’s in›uence as a “spiritual domination of the world” (“geistiges Welterobertum”). Walther Vetter, “Ein politische Beethoven-Betrachtung,” Festschrift Arnold Schering zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Helmuth Osthoff, Walter Serauky, and Adam Adrio (Berlin: A. Gas, 1937), 249. See also Dennis, 149–50. This linking of Beethoven with Hitler is further demonstrated by performances of Beethoven’s music on Hitler’s birthday in 1937 and 1938. Dennis, 162.

notes to pages 102–3

193

89. Ludwig Schiedermair, “Zu Beethovens Schicksalsidee,” in Von Deutscher Tonkunst: Festschrift zu Peter Raabes 70. Geburtstag, ed. Alfred Morgenroth (Leipzig: C. F. Peters, 1942), 76. See also Mary-Elizabeth O’Brien, “The Celluloid War: Packaging War for Sale in Nazi Home-Front Films,” in Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, ed. Richard A. Etlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 163. 90. O’Brien, 162. 91. Walter Jacobs, “Beethoven im Rundfunk: Musik- und Staatspolitik,” Kölnische Zeitung (16 December 1934), quoted in Dennis, 151. 92. O’Brien, 163. The sonata changes into a march as the camera moves from an intimate gathering of petit bourgeoisie dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms to columns of marching infantrymen. O’Brien states, “The ›uidity of these scenes suggests that war is necessary to protect German culture.” 93. Dennis, 162. The Third Symphony also had a place in the festivities. 94. Karl Hasse, Von Deutschen Meistern: Zur Neugestaltung unseres Musiklebens im neuen Deutschland, vol. 2 (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1934), 74. 95. Richard Eichenauer, Musik und Rasse (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1932), 214–16. For information on Eichenauer, see Pamela M. Potter, Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 179. 96. David Gramit, “Constructing a Victorian Schubert: Music, Biography, and Cultural Value,” Nineteenth Century Music 92, no. 1 (Summer 1993): 72. Gramit explains that Schubert’s skull also supposedly had an “almost feminine organization” (“fast weibliches Organisation”), according to Kreissle’s Franz Schubert (1865). 97. See Scott Messing, Schubert in the European Imagination, vol. 1, The Romantic and Victorian Eras (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 8–55. 98. Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 155. 99. Sanna Pederson, “On the Task of the Music Historian: The Myth of the Symphony after Beethoven,” Repercussions 2, no. 2 (Fall 1993): 9. Refer also to Poundie Burstein, “Lyricism, Structure, and Gender in Schubert’s G major String Quartet,” Musical Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 51–63. 100. Otto Weininger, Sex and Character, authorized translation from the sixth German edition (London: William Heinemann, [1906?]), 306. Marion Wilson Kimber explains that this idea of the feminized Jew appeared not only in Weiniger’s writing but earlier in the writings of Jewish scientists and was in fact prominent in the scienti‹c and psychological works of the late nineteenth century. See Marian Wilson Kimber, “The Composer as Other: Gender and Race in the Biography of Felix Mendelssohn,” in The Mendelssohns: Their Music in History, ed. John Michael Cooper and Julie D. Prandi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 345. 101. Suzanne Stutman, ed., My Other Loneliness: Letters of Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 279–80. 102. For a discussion of this stereotype, see Marie-Agnes Dittrich, “Kein grollender Titan: Franz Schubert, der Österreicher,” Hamburg Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 15 (1998): 195.

194

notes to pages 103–5

103. Max Morold, “Die deutsche Tonkunst in Österreich,” in Ruhmeshalle deutscher Arbeit in der österreichisch- ungarischen Monarchie, ed. Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anhalt, 1916), 453. 104. On his ‹rst visit to Vienna, Hitler wrote, “From morning until late at night, I ran from one object of interest to another, but it was always the buildings that held my primary interest. For hours I could stand in front of the Opera, for hours I could gaze at the Parliament; the whole Ring Boulevard seemed to me like an enchantment out of ‘The Thousand-and-One Nights.’” Quoted in Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 45–46. 105. Hitler attempted and failed to enter the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in both 1907 and 1908. He also tried to gain admittance to the Vienna Architectural School. Gilliam, “The Annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi Revisionism and the Politics of Appropriation,” 601. 106. Joseph Goebbels, The Goebbels Diaries: 1939–1941, trans. Fred Taylor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938), 266. 107. Celia Applegate, “The Past and Present of Hausmusik in the Third Reich,” in Music and Nazism: Art under Tyranny, 1933–1945, ed. Michael H. Kater and Albrecht Riethmüller (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2003), 136. 108. Kater, The Twisted Muse, 132. See also Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 109. Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 178. She further points out that the Nazis contradicted their ideological concern for the family with party meetings and other social policies that actually left the family home empty. 110. Kater, The Twisted Muse, 131. 111. Ibid. 112. Maurice Williams, “German Imperialism and Austria, 1938,” Journal of Contemporary History 14 (1979): 139. 113. Stanley Suval, The Anschluss Question in the Weimar Era: A Study of Nationalism in Germany and Austria, 1918–1933 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 63. 114. See Gilliam, “The Annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi Revisionism and the Politics of Appropriation,” 584–609. See also Albrecht Riethmüller, Die Walhalla und ihre Musiker (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1993), 16–17. 115. Richard Benz, Von den drei Welten der Musik (Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1939), 88–89. 116. None of the movies the Nazis made during their reign were about Wagner, Beethoven, or Bruckner; they presented “hardly heroes” instead, such as Schubert and Tchaikovsky, perhaps in an effort to redeem them or sanitize them for political purposes, such as the Anschluss in Schubert’s case. For more information, refer to Heldt, 114–35. 117. Hasse, 73. 118. Richard Benz, Die ewigen Meister (Jena: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1935), 63.

notes to pages 105–8

195

119. Benz, 63. 120. For a striking discussion of this use of music, see Gilliam, “The Annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi Revisionism and the Politics of Appropriation,” 584–604. 121. Helmut Brenner, “National Socialist Strategies for Denationalisation and ‘Ethical Change’ through Music and Their Practical Realisation as Attempted in Slovenian Lower Styria, 1941–1945,” Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung (1990): 106. 122. Ibid., 97.

Chapter 5 Martin O. Stern, “How do you like America?” Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 69. Stern grew up in Essen during the Nazi period. 1. Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 2, The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 315. 2. For example, on 18 April 1739, a letter by “R.W.” in the London Daily Post used Handel’s Israel in Egypt as war propaganda, comparing the oratorio’s plot to Britain’s own troubles with un-Christian enemies. See Ruth Smith, Handel’s Oratorios and EighteenthCentury Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 214. 3. Ibid., 202–4. 4. See Thomas McGeary, “Music, Meaning, and Politics: The 1784 Handel Commemoration Reconsidered,” Göttinge Händel-Beiträge (2002): 205–17. 5. See Benita Wolters-Fredlund, “ ‘We shall go forward with our Songs into the Fight for a Better Life’: Identity and Musical Meaning in the History of the Toronto Jewish Folk Choir, 1925–1959,” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2005), 199. In the nineteenth century, Bernd Edelmann explains that in Germany Handel’s Judas Maccabeus with its message of victory was connected to the Napoleonic war. See Bernd Edelmann, “Der bürgerliche Handel: Deutsche Händel-Rezeption von 1800 bis 1850,” Musik-Konzepte (January 2006): 27. For information on political uses of Handel in twentieth-century Germany before, during, and after the Third Reich, see Pamela M. Potter, “The Politicization of Handel and His Oratorios in the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Early Years of the German Democratic Republic,” Musical Quarterly 85, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 311–41. In England in 1938, Alan Bush and Randall Swingler staged Belshazzar as a demonstration “against the iniquities of rampant imperialism.” Smith, 213. 6. See Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, “Verdi’s Life: A Thematic Biography,” in The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, ed. Scott L. Balthazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 12. 7. Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 572. 8. See Mary Ann Smart, “Verdi, Italian Romanticism, and the Risorgimento,” in The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, ed. Scott L. Balthazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 29–45. 9. See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizo-

196

notes to pages 109–10

phrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 300–303. 10. The article continues, “Rumors had already been spread that Jews were forbidden to perform the works of Aryans; an of‹cial ban, however, came only at this point” (“Schon früher waren Gerüchte verbreitet, dass Juden die Aufführung der Werke von Ariern verboten worden sei, ein of‹zielles Verbot erging aber erst jetzt”). “Jüdischer Kulturbund darf Mozart nicht aufführen,” Selbstwehr, 1 November 1935, Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. The League did, however, continue to perform the works of “Aryan” composers past 1935, and Mozart himself did not completely disappear from the League’s repertoire until the Anschluss of Austria. 11. “Jews Must Not Play Mozart or Beethoven,” Evening Standard (June 1937?), Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. See also “Die deutschen Juden sollen Weke von Beethoven, Goethe und Mozart nicht aufführen,” Die Wahrheit, 21 May 1937: 6. 12. Herbert Freeden, “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika,” Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute 1 (1956): 155. 13. Because I rely on sources that use the designation Old Testament, I will also use the term Old Testament, rather than Hebrew Bible, throughout this chapter to avoid confusion. 14. Howard E. Smither, A History of the Oratorio, vol. 1 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 299. Smither offers another reason for this use of the Old Testament and relative lack of oratorios based on the New Testament, when he explains that poets of the Baroque feared accusations of heresy for portraying stories about Christ and the Apostles. Smither, 300. 15. Manfred F. Bukofzer, Music in the Baroque Era: From Monteverdi to Bach (New York: W. W. Norton, 1947), 336. 16. Paul Henry Lang, “Editorial” (October 1959), Musical Quarterly 75, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 76. 17. Ibid. 18. See Smith, 94, 141–45. 19. Smith, 214–15. Smith also identi‹es this analogy of ancient Israel to modern Britain in secular literature of the seventeenth century, such as Dryden’s Absolom and Achitophel and Milton’s Samson Agonistes. 20. Alfred Rosenberg, Address on Handel’s 250th birthday, reprinted in Alfred Rosenberg, Gestaltung der Idee (Munich: Verlag Eher, 1936), 281. 21. Richard Eichenauer, Musik und Rasse (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1932), 175–76. 22. Richard Eichenauer, Musik und Rasse (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1937), 190. 23. Pamela M. Potter, Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 225. 24. Ibid., 224. 25. Ibid., 224.

notes to pages 111–12

197

26. For information on Goebbels’s and Rosenberg’s rivalry, see Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 14–17. 27. Amtliche Mitteilungen der Reichsmusikkammer (September 1934), 22. Quoted and translated in Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 78. 28. “Für und wider: ‘Judas Makkabaeus,’” B.T. [Berliner Tageblatt?] (1936), Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 29. “Handel Fit for Aryans,” Manchester Guardian (29 October 1934), Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 30. Ibid. 31. The Manchester Guardian continued to stay abreast of the regime’s Handel activities and Aryanization of the composer’s oratorios. See “Handel Oratorio ‘Aryanized’: New Text and Title,” Manchester Guardian (2 November 1936), Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 32. Potter, “The Politicization of Handel and His Oratorios in the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Early Years of the German Democratic Republic,” 323–24. See also Isabelle Müntzenberger, “Händel-Renaissance(n): Aspekte der Händel-Rezeption der 1920er Jahre und der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus,” Musik-Konzepte (January 2006): 83; and Katja Roters, Bearbeitungen von Händel-Oratorien im Dritten Reich (Halle: Händel Haus, 1999). Stephani had actually already produced a revision of Judas Maccabeus in 1914. This was the ‹rst adaptation of a Handelian oratorio. See Potter, “The Politicization of Handel and His Oratorios in the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Early Years of the German Democratic Republic,” 324. 33. In a 1937 edition of the periodical Das Wort, edited by Lion Feuchtwanger, Bertolt Brecht, and Willi Bredel, an article appeared that challenged the rewriting of Handel’s oratorios. In the article, the author Hans Behrend, writing under the pseudonym Albert Norden, called the Handel activity an example of “the arrogance and irreverence” (“die Arroganz und Ehrfurchtlosigkeit”) with which German creations are treated in service to the state. Quoted in Müntzenberger, 83. 34. “Making Handel and Bach Safe for Nazi Ears,” Manchester Guardian, 17 February 1942, Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 35. “Making Handel and Bach Safe for Nazi Ears.” 36. Quoted and translated in Howard E. Smither, A History of the Oratorio, vol. 4 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 13. 37. See Conrad L. Donakowski, A Muse for the Masses: Ritual and Music in an Age of Democratic Revolution, 1770–1870 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 122. 38. Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, “Germans as the ‘People of Music’: Genealogy of an Identity,” in Music and German National Identity, ed. Cecilia Applegate and Pamela Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 21. Research shows that group singing does create a sense of unity since music brings about similar physical responses in all people. Bruce Richman explains, “A culturally agreed-upon pattern of rhythm and melody, i.e., a song, that is sung together, provides a shared form of emotion that, at least during the course of the song, carries along the participants so that they experience their

198

notes to pages 112–14

bodies responding emotionally in very similar ways. This is the source of the feeling of solidarity and good will that comes with choral singing: people’s physiological arousals are in synchrony and in harmony, at least for a brief period.” Bruce Richman, “Rhythm and Melody in Gelade Vocal Exchanges,” quoted in Anthony Storr, Music and the Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 7. 39. This was not the ‹rst time the power of singing had been harnessed to boost morale and form national attachments. Donakowski describes the Prussian king’s desire to utilize singing in a similar way and his order that Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832) establish male choruses throughout the Prussian army “in order to build morale, educate the soldiers musically, and build emotional attachment to the established religion.” Donakowski, 200. 40. Excerpt from Friedrich W. Herzog “Deutsche Mitte” (Halle, 1935), reproduced in Joseph Wulf ’s Musik im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation ([Reinbek b. Hamburg]: Rowohlt, 1966), 254. 41. Wulf, 255. 42. Ludwig K. Mayer, “Georg Friedrich Händel: Zu seinem 175. Todestage,” Völkischer Beobachter, 14 April 1934: 283. Translated in David B. Dennis, “‘Honor Your German Masters’: The Use and Abuse of ‘Classical’ Composers in Nazi Propaganda,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 30, no. 2 (Winter 2002): 282. 43. Horst J. P. Bergmeier, Ejal Jakob Eisler, and Rainer E. Lotz, Vorbei . . . Beyond Recall: Dokumentation jüdischen Musiklebens in Berlin 1933–1938. . . A Record of Jewish Musical Life in Nazi Berlin, 1933–1938 (Hambergen: Bear Family Records, 2001), 79. In Berlin and elsewhere, Singer himself also lectured on Handel, speci‹cally his oratorios. Lecture program in the League’s Monatsblätter (February 1934): 16. 44. The Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt consistently announced these rehearsals of Judas Maccabeus, with no mention of the composer—perhaps as a means of avoiding censor. 45. “Lainchor,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 23 January 1940: 2. This announcement also appeared in the ‹ve subsequent editions of the paper. 46. In the two articles about the concert, Ludwig Misch and Karl Wiener both highlighted the fact that the choir was repeating a work from their not so distant past. They also underscored Mendelssohn’s use of the Bible, which was a link between Handel’s Judas Maccabeus and its replacement, Lobgesang. See Karl Wiener, “Konzert der Jüdischen Winterhilfe in Berlin, am 31. März,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 29 March 1940: 5; and Ludwig Misch, “Abschlukonzert der Jüdischen Winterhilfe,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 12 April 1940: 5. 47. Volker Dahm, “Kulturelles und geistiges Leben,” in Die Juden in Deutschland 1933–1945: Leben unter nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft, ed. Wolfgang Benz (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988), 135. 48. Hans Nathan, “‘Judas Maccabäus’ in the Kulturbund,” Jüdische Rundschau, 10 May 1934: 13. 49. The work was dedicated to the Duke of Cumberland “in acknowledgement of his suppression of the recent Jacobite rebellion.” Ruth Smith, “The Meaning of Morell’s Libretto of ‘Judas Maccabaeus,’ ” Music and Letters 79, no. 1 (February 1998): 50.

notes to pages 114–22

199

50. Nathan, “‘Judas Maccabäus’ in the Kulturbund,” 13. 51. See Percy M. Young, The Oratorios of Handel (New York: Roy Publishers, 1950), 445–46; and Smith, “The Meaning of Morell’s Libretto of ‘Judas Maccabaeus,’” 57–61. 52. Gerhard Goldschlag, article from the Israelitisches Familienblatt, quoted in Dahm, 135. 53. Dahm, 135. 54. In bars 39–43, a B  replaces the B  of the previous measures, signaling the major tonality of the relative major to underscore the “joy” the text describes. The B  returns, however, on the ‹nal word of the line “woe.” 55. See Kai, “Dr. Kurt Singer über Judas Makkabäus,” CV-Zeitung, 3 May 1934: 6. 56. B.P., “In der Philharmonie: Händels ‘Judas Maccabäus,” Jüdische Liberale, 15 May 1934, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 57. Herbert Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, trans. William Templer (Providence: Berg, 1993), 82. 58. “Der sein halbes Leben der jüdischen Geschichte gewidmet.” Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933–1941, ed. Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992), 294. 59. “Eine Vorliebe für die Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes.” Nathan, “‘Judas Maccabäus’ in the Kulturbund,” 13. 60. Rudolf Kastner, “Haendel und sein Werk,” in the program from the Jewish Culture League performance of Monday, 7 May, and Tuesday, 8 May 1934, of Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, directed by Kurt Singer in Berlin, Rudolf Zielenziger Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 61. Kastner, “Haendel und sein Werk.” 62. Quoted in Philip Bohlman, The World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine, 1936–1940: Jewish Musical Life on the Eve of World War II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 167–68. Underline added by the author. 63. Quoted in Bohlman, 208–9. 64. Both oratorios were reportedly performed in Theresienstadt. Potter, “The Politicization of Handel and His Oratorios in the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Early Years of the German Democratic Republic,” 322. 65. See “Noch einmal ‘Israel,’ ” Israelitisches Familienblatt, 11 February 1937, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 66. H. F. “Material for Pessach,” Reichsverband der Juedischen Kulturbuende in Deutschland, Mitteilungen (March 1938): 9. 67. Alexander L. Ringer, “Handel and the Jews,” Music and Letters 42, no. 1 (January 1961): 29. 68. Eliezer Segal, “Getting a Handel on Hanukkah,” http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/ ~elsegal/Shokel/981210_HandelHanukkah.html (accessed 29 May 2008). 69. Antoine Lilienfeld-Lewenz, “Judas Makkabäus, Samson, Belsazar: Die biblischen Texte in Händels Oratorien,” Der Schild, 8 February 1935, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 70. “The oratorios had by necessity become the staple of Jewish performance

200

notes to pages 122–24

groups.” Potter, “The Politicization of Handel and His Oratorios in the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Early Years of the German Democratic Republic,” 321. 71. Gundula Kreuzer, “Zurück zu Verdi: The ‘Verdi Renaissance’ and Musical Culture in the Weimar Republic,” Studi Verdiani 13 (1998): 118. 72. Ibid., 140. 73. Letter from Verdi to Francesco Florimo, dated 4 January 1871. Quoted in ibid., 130. 74. Kurt Weill, “Zur großen Form!” (August 1931), quoted in Jürgen Schebera, Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life, trans. Caroline Murphy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 183. 75. Quoted in Kreuzer, 146. 76. See Phillips-Matz, 3, 12. 77. See Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 11. 78. Adolf Weissmann, Verdi (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1922), 157. 79. Isaiah Berlin, “The Naiveté of Verdi,” in The Verdi Companion, ed. William Weaver and Martin Chusid (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 7. 80. Ter Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), xv. 81. See Bryan Gilliam, “The Annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi Revisionism and the Politics of Appropriation,” Musical Quarterly 78, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 592. 82. Raskin explained, “Verdi was a son of the soil, a dominant type with a most re‹ned instinct for everything true, healthy, natural, viable. His national feeling, his most genuine closeness to the people’s emotions, his incorruptible sense of justice, his often hurtful honesty—[in all this] we recognise the roots of his nature: this classical health is solitary in the romantic century, as solitary as the health of the peasant Bruckner on the other side of the Alps.” Adolf Raskin, “Verdi and Aïda. Thema con variationi,” Der Scheinwerfer 5, no. 16 (1932), quoted and translated in Gundula Kreuzer, “Verdi and German Culture, 1871–1945” (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2004), 184. 83. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 192. 84. Gertrud Runge, “Maestro della rivoluzione Italiana [sic]. Zu Guiseppe [sic] Verdis 40. Todestage,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (28 January 1941), and Alfred Baresel, Giuseppe Verdi. Leben und Werk (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1938), 26, quoted and translated in Kreuzer, “Verdi and German Culture, 1871–1945,” 186. See also 184–85. 85. Eichenauer (1932), 254, and Hans-Joachim Moser, “Giuseppe Verdi,” Deutsche Musikkultur 3 (1938–39), 373. See also Kreuzer, “Verdi and German Culture, 1871–1945,” 188–89. 86. Quoted in Herbert F. Peyser,“Germany’s Nationalistic Revival: P‹tzner, Attacking Verdi as ‘Insipid,’ Advocates Operas of Marschner, Lortzing, and Bruch,” New York Times, 18 June 1933: X4. For information on P‹tzner’s frustrations in the Nazi period, see Michael Kater’s chapter on the composer in Composers of the Nazi Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 144–82. 87. Kreuzer, “Verdi and German Culture, 1871–1945,” 192. 88. Alfred Heuß criticized Werfel’s adaptation of the opera and his “speci‹cally Jew-

notes to pages 124–26

201

ish alteration” of the original meaning—typical of how “unscrupulous Jews permeate something dissimilar to their nature . . . with their own blood and thus render its true quality unrecognizable.” Quoted and translated in Kreuzer, “Zurück zu Verdi: The ‘Verdi Renaissance’ and Musical Culture in the Weimar Republic,” 138. 89. “ist ein frei gestalteter biblischer Stoff.” Herbert Gerigk, Giuseppe Verdi (Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1932), 23. In Verdi, Karl Holl took a different course, explaining that many Italian operas made use of the Old Testament, including Rossini (Moses) and Donizetti (Belisar). Karl Holl, Verdi (Berlin: Karl Siegismund Verlag, 1939), 69. 90. Gerigk, 2. 91. Kreuzer, “Verdi and German Culture, 1871–1945,” 210–11. 92. Gerigk, 157. 93. See Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin Group, 2004), 184–85. 94. Holl, 419–20. For information on the Axis, see Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis (New York: Penguin Group, 2000), 24–25. 95. Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 190. 96. Ludwig Misch, “Verdi-Abend im Jüdischen Kulturbund,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 18 July 1941, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 97. H. Freyhan, “Rigoletto,” CV-Zeitung, 6 October 1938: 11. 98. Jakob Schoenberg, “‘Rigoletto’ im Kulturbund,” Jüdische Rundschau, 4 October 1938: 8. 99. Ibid. 100. Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), 212–13. 101. Berlin, 6. 102. Micha Michalowitz, “La Traviata: Verdis Oper im Jüdischen Kulturbund,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 10 March 1939: 8. 103. For a performance history, see Kreuzer, “Verdi and German Culture, 1871–1945,” 250. And yet, several articles in the Jewish press mention that the work was at the time unknown in Germany. See, for example, Ludwig Misch, “Nabucco: Zur Erstaufführung der Verdi-Oper im Kulturbundtheater,” Das Jüdische Gemeindeblatt, 14 April 1935, FritzWisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Levi asserts that the Jewish press did not review Nabucco in order to avoid “reprisals from the Nazis.” Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 56. This statement is simply inaccurate as the reviews listed here and in footnote 106 prove. 104. Kurt Singer, “Allgemeine zur Gesamtlage,” 14 June 1935, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 16. 105. See Charles Osborne, The Complete Operas of Verdi (London: Victor Gollancz, 1969), 52. 106. Misch, “Nabucco: Zur Erstaufführung der Verdi-Oper im Kulturbundtheater.” See also Kam. L.M., “Verdi’s Nabucco/Opernpremiere im Berliner Kulturbund,” Der Schild [?], 12 April 1935, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; and Herbert

202

notes to pages 126–32

Fleischer, “Verdis ‘Nebukadnezar,’” League Program (April 1935), Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 107. See Kreuzer, “Verdi and German Culture, 1871–1945,” 213. 108. Smith, Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought, 44–48. 109. H. Freyhan, “Verdi im Kulturbund,” Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung (April 1935), Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 110. Kurt Singer, “Allgemeines” (a circular to League personnel dated 9 April 1936), Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 9. Singer also suggested Joseph in Ägypten by Méhul. 111. Carolyn Gianturco, “Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno: Four Case-Studies in Determining Italian Poetic-Musical Genres,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 119, no. 2 (1994): 45. 112. Marcello Conati, “Between Past and Future: The Dramatic World of Rossini in Mosé in Egitto and Moïse et Pharaon,” Nineteenth Century Music 4, no. 1 (Summer 1980): 40. Petrobelli draws parallels between Rossini’s work and Verdi’s Nabucco and maintains, based on Verdi’s biography, that the composer would have been familiar with the second version of Rossini’s Mosé. See Pierluigi Petrobelli, Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers, translations by Roger Parker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 8–27. 113. Hans Nathan,“Premiere im Kulturbund: ‘Nabucco’ von Giuseppe Verdi,” Jüdische Rundschau, 9 April 1935: 9. 114. Herbert Fleischer, “Verdis ‘Nebukadnezar,’” 3. 115. See Roger Parker, “Arpa d’or dei fatidici vati”: The Verdia Patriotic Chorus in the 1840s (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1997), 32–33, 100. 116. See Program of April 1935, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 117. Leo Schottlaender, “‘Va pensiero . . .’: Einige Worte zum ‘Nabukadnezar,” Jüdische Rundschau, 29 March 1935: 12. 118. See Scott L. Balthazar, “The Forms of Set Pieces,” in The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, ed. Scott L. Balthazar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 64–65. 119. Nathan, “Premiere in Kulturbund: ‘Nabucco’ von Giuseppe Verdi.” 120. Ruth HaCohen, “Between Noise and Harmony: The Oratorical Moment in the Musical Entanglements of Jews and Christians,” Critical Inquiry 32 (Winter 2006): 256. 121. Kurt Singer, Letter to the editor in response to the Jüdische Rundschau’s critique (25 July 1933) of the League’s planned production of Lessing’s Nathan der Weise. Translated in “Polemic about the premiere of the Jewish Kulturbund,” http://www.historyof-the-holocaust.org/LIBARC/ARCHIVE/Chapters/Shock/Cultural/Polemic.html (accessed 8 March 2006).

Chapter 6 1. See Clive Brown, A Portrait of Mendelssohn (New Haven: Yale University, 2003), 492–93.

notes to pages 132–34

203

2. “Seit Wagners ‘Judentum in der Musik’ hat man die Werke gern als ‘seicht’ und ‘überlebt’ abgetan.” Anneliese Landau, “Zwei Gedenktage. Zu Mendelssohn-Bartholdys 125. Geburtstag,” Der Morgen (February 1934): 478. See also R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), xxii–xxiii. 3. See Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, xxvi. 4. “es ist klar: wir stehen jetzt anders zu Mendelssohn als unsere Eltern.” Hans Nathan, “ ‘Elias’—Aufführung in Berlin,” Jüdische Rundschau, 13 March 1934: 21. 5. Hans Nathan, “ ‘Elias’—Aufführung in Berlin,” 21. 6. See also Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 71. 7. Karl Blessinger, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mahler: Drei Kapitel Judentum in der Musik als Schlüssel zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Bernhard Haynefeld Verlag, 1939), 9. Translated in Brown, 495–96. 8. Blessinger, 42. Translated in Brown, 496–97. 9. For a history of the work, see Michael Struck, Robert Schumann: Violinkonzer Dmoll (WoO23) (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1988), 20–22. See also John Daverio, Robert Schumann: Herald of a “New Poetic Age” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 16. 10. Herbert Gerigk and Theo Stengel, Lexikon der Juden in der Musik (Berlin: Bernhard Hahnefeld Verlag, 1940), 180. 11. Hans Joachim Moser, Kleine deutsche Musikgeschichte (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1938), 245. 12. See Levi, 62. 13. “Mendelssohn Banned by the Nazis,” Manchester Guardian, 20 September 1934, Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 14. The Manchester Guardian reported on Orff ’s commission in “Atonal Music Condemned,” Manchester Guardian, 8 June 1938, Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 15. Letter from Carl Orff to a regime of‹cial. Quoted in Joachim Martin, “Felix Mendelssohn und das ‘Dritte Reich’. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Rezeption der Musik und der Persönlichkeit Felix Mendelssohns,” in Felix Mendelssohn—Mitwelt und Nachwelt, ed. Gewandhaus zu Leipzig (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1996), 67–68. 16. See Fred K. Prieberg, Musik im NS-Staat (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1982), 144–64; and Levi, 72–73. 17. Paul Nettl, “Judaism and Music,” in The Hebrew Impact on Western Civilization, ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 386. 18. For the excited report about the possibility of receiving the Mendelssohn statue, see the article “Um ein Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Denkmal,” Jüdische Rundschau, 7 October 1936: 5. The statue’s destruction was reported shortly thereafter in the Morning Post, 14 November 1936, Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. See also Todd, Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, xx–xxi. 19. Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), 127.

204

notes to pages 134–36

20. Karl Wiener, “Über Mendelssohns Sommernachtstraum-Musik,” in the Program of December 1936, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 21. Arthur Eloesser, “‘Sommernachtstraum’ im Kulturbund,” Jüdische Rundschau, 4 December 1936: 5. 22. Levi, 72. 23. A.F., “Sommernachtstraum,” Gemeindeblatt, Leipzig, 18 December 1936, FritzWisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 24. R. Larry Todd,“Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy), (Jacob Ludwig) Felix,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 16, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), 407. 25. The work was also performed in Theresienstadt and appears at the beginning and scene seventeen of the documentary ‹lm of the concentration camp, completed by the Nazis on 28 March 1945. Gregory Gilmore, “Musical and Cultural Activities inside Terezín, 1941–1945,” Music Research Forum 11, no. 1 (1996): 26–27. 26. Alfred Guttmann, “Musik der Woche,” Israelitisches Familienblatt, 4 February 1937, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 27. See Jeffrey S. Spostao, The Price of Assimilation: Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 114–62. 28. Ibid., 179. 29. Leon Botstein, “Mendelssohn and the Jews,” Musical Quarterly 82, no. 11 (Spring 1998): 213. 30. Anneliese Landau, “Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, in Observance of 100th Anniversary of Their Deaths,” Anneliese Landau Archiv, Akademie der Künste, 10. 31. Ibid. This reaction corresponded to the view of many German Cultural Zionists, who regarded conversion to Christianity by a contemporary ‹gure as anathema. However, for some, conversion during an earlier period did not always result in exclusion and was explained away on the grounds of “different historical circumstances.” Mark H. Gelber, Melancholy Pride: Nation, Race, and Gender in the German Literature of Cultural Zionism (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000), 281–82. 32. Prieberg similarly concludes, “Many personalities worked for identi‹cation through their own music, which was not to be confused with German music: to them, composers like Mendelssohn sounded too German, too distant from the promise of a new and ultimate homeland” (“Viele Persönlichkeiten arbeiteten für die Identi‹kation durch eine eigene, mit der deutschen nicht zu verwechselnde Tonkunst; ihnen klangen Komponisten wie Mendelssohn zu deutsch, zu fern der Verheiung einer neuen und endgültigen Heimstatt”). Prieberg, 84. 33. Nathan, “ ‘Elias’—Aufführung in Berlin,” 21. 34. Transcription of Nathan’s speech at the Jewish Culture League Conference, Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933–1941, ed. Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992), 288. 35. Landau, “Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, in Observance of 100th Anniversary of Their Deaths,” 10. 36. For a discussion of these works, especially the work of Eric Werner, see Jeffrey S.

notes to pages 136–38

205

Sposato, “Creative Writing: The [Self-] Identi‹cation of Mendelssohn as Jew,” Musical Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 192–204. 37. Kurt Baumann in Monika Richarz, eds., Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries, trans. Stella P. Rosenfeld and Sidney Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 383. 38. “Mahlerlieder im Kulturbund,” Jüdische Rundschau, 18 June 1935: 10. 39. Robert Hirschfeld was the son of a rabbi and student of philosophy. See Elisabeth Riz, “Robert Hirschfeld. Leben-Wirken-Bedeutung,” in Biographische Beiträge zum Musikleben Wiens im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Friedrich C. Heller (Vienna: Verbander Wissenschaftlichen Gessellschaften Österreichs, 1992), 5. 40. See Leon Botstein, “Whose Gustav Mahler? Reception, Interpretation, and History,” in Mahler and His World, ed. Karen Painter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 28–33. 41. Pronouncement of 1948 in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch and ed. G. H. Von Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 67. 42. See Joseph Wulf, Presse und Funk im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation (Vienna: Ullstein, 1983), 374–76; and Fabian R. Lovisa, Musikkritik im Nationalismus. Die Rolle deutschprachiger Musikzeitschriften 1920–1945 (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1993), 199. Still, reactions to the regime’s prohibition of criticism varied. See Karen Painter, Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900–1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 260–61. 43. Kurt Singer, “Vom Unfug musikalischer Kritik,” Kurt Singer Collection, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati. See M. E., “Kritik als Aufgabe,” CV-Zeitung, 17 January 1935: 1. 44. See Jacob Boas, “German Jewry’s Search for Renewal in the Hitler Era as Re›ected in the Major Jewish Newspapers (1933–1938),” Journal of Modern History 53, no. 1 (March 1981): 1007. 45. Anneliese Landau, The Contribution of Jewish Composers to the Music of the Modern World (Cincinnati: National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 1946), 9. This publication was based on research Landau conducted for her lectures within the League. 46. Geschlossene Vorstellung, 292. 47. Ibid. 48. Landau, The Contribution of Jewish Composers to the Music of the Modern World, 9. 49. Anneliese Landau, “Gustav Mahler: der ‘Unzeitgemäße,’” Almanach, ed. Kulturbund Deutscher Juden Berlin (Berlin: Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, 1935), 56. 50. Hirsch explained, “Whoever had been initially inclined to accept, say, nothing but Yiddish folksongs and synagogue liturgy as Jewish music soon felt so restricted that he was once again ready to tolerate Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, and Mahler as part of the Jewish musical legacy” (“Wer zuerst geneigt gewesen wäre, etwa nur jiddische Volkslieder und synagogale Liturgie als jüdisch zu akzeptieren, mußte sich bald so beengt fühlen, da er auch Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn und Mahler wieder für das musikalische Judentum tolerierte”). Leo Hirsch, “Was ist jüdisch?” Jüdische Rundschau, 17 September 1937: 9. Translated in Herbert Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, trans. William Templer (Providence: Berg, 1993), 93.

206

notes to pages 138–39

51. Stefan further wrote, “if since Wagner, being German means to pursue something for its own sake, then certainly no one has been more German.” Paul Stefan (1910), quoted and translated in Karen Painter, “Jewish Identity and Anti-Semitic Critique in the Austro-German Reception of Mahler, 1900–1945,” in Perspectives on Gustav Mahler, ed. Jeremy Barham (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 180. See also Painter, Symphonic Aspirations, 141. 52. Kirk Severtson, “In the Spirit of the People: Mahler’s Settings of Folk Poetry from Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” Music Research Forum 14 (1999): 4. 53. Paul Banks, “The Early Social and Musical Environment of Gustav Mahler” (PhD diss., Trinity, 1980), 161. Bruno Walter also identi‹es these interests, drawing a connection between Jean Paul Richter’s character of Roquairol and Mahler himself in his Gustav Mahler, trans. James Galston (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1937), 140. For an explanation of Mahler’s interest in Rückert’s work, see Jonathan Carr, Mahler: A Biography (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1999), 128. 54. Morten Solvik, “Mahler and Germany,” in The Mahler Companion, ed. Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 137. 55. Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 102. 56. See Painter, 184–89. The controversy and contestation that surrounded attempts to appropriate Mahler as a Jewish composer within the League also echoed efforts within German Cultural Zionism around the turn of the century to appropriate the complicated ‹gure of Heinrich Heine. See Gelber, 142–44. 57. Hans Nathan, “Zu Gustav Mahlers 75. Geburtstag,” Jüdische Rundschau, 16 July 1935: 7. See Max Brod, “Gustav Mahlers jüdische Melodien,” Musikblätter des Anbruch 2 (1920): 378–79. As a Jew, Brod’s conclusion that Mahler’s music was, in fact, un-German provided the Nazis with a powerful “unbiased” voice with which, hopefully, not even Nazi opponents could argue. The import Nazis placed on this matter is evident in an article about Brod in the Lexikon der Juden in der Musik, which extends a whole page and makes no mention of his friendship with Janác&ek or his own musical achievements. Instead it focuses on his Mahler article of 1920 and its clari‹cation of the Jewish element in Mahler’s music. Brod’s essay is also cited within the work’s discussion of Mahler. See Gerigk and Stengel, 41–42, 171. 58. Oskar Baum, “Gustav Mahler/zum 25. Todestag am 18. Mai,” Jüdische Rundschau, 15 May 1936: 5. 59. Ludwig Landau, “Das jüdische Element bei Gustav Mahler,” Der Morgen 12, no. 2 (1936): 68. 60. L. Landau, “Das jüdische Element bei Gustav Mahler,” 68. 61. Ibid., 73. 62. Nathan, “Zu Gustav Mahlers 75. Geburtstag,” 7. 63. Baum, “Gustav Mahler/zum 25. Todestag am 18. Mai,” 5. This idea that Mahler did not know Jewish music was countered by Magnus Davidsohn, the former cantor at the synagogue on Fasanenstraße in an essay that appeared in the CV-Zeitung of 10 January

notes to pages 139–40

207

1935. Because of the controversy surrounding this assertion, Bernd Sponheuer, who conducts an excellent overview of the press regarding Mahler’s Jewishness in the League, reprints Davidsohn’s report in its entirety. See Bernd Sponheuer, “Musik auf einer ‘kulturellen und physischen Insel’: Musik als Überlebensmittel im Jüdischen Kulturbund 1933–1941,” in Musik in der Emigration 1933–1945. Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Rückwirkung, ed. Horst Weber (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993), 133. 64. The debate about Mahler’s Jewishness was also evident in responses to the Frankfurt League’s performance of Mahler’s First Symphony on 4 November 1934. See Oliver Hilmes, Im Fadenkreuz: Politische Gustav-Mahler-Rezeption 1919–1945 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003), 163–64. 65. Botstein, “Whose Gustav Mahler?” 6–7. 66. Hilmes, 150. Before 1929, Mahler reception had experienced several high points, including the performances, with Bruno Walter conducting, of a total of six different Mahler symphonies in 1918 and the Amsterdam Mahler Festival, 6–21 May 1920. For further information on Mahler reception, see Christoph Metzger, Mahler-Rezeption: Perspektiven der Rezeption Gustav Mahlers (Wilhelmshaven, Germany: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 2000), 53–78. 67. Horst J. P. Bergmeier, Ejal Jakob Eisler, and Rainer E. Lotz, Vorbei . . . Beyond Recall: Dokumentation jüdischen Musiklebens in Berlin 1933–1938 . . . A Record of Jewish Musical Life in Nazi Berlin, 1933–1938 (Hambergen: Bear Family Records, 2001), 97. 68. Joseph Rosenstock, “Orchester und Oper,” in “Ein Jahr Kulturbund Deutscher Juden: Den Mitgliedern des Kulturbundes Überreicht von der Leitung des Kulturbundes” (September 1934), Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 5–6. 69. H. Freyan,“Berliner Konzerte,” Jüdische allgemeine Zeitung, 15 January 1936, FritzWisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 70. Hilmes, 151. 71. Micha Michalowitz, “Orchester des Kulturbundes: Symphonieabend in Berlin,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 5 May 1939: 10. 72. Ibid. 73. Goldsmith, 201. 74. Karl Wiener, “Gustav Mahler: Zu seinem 80. Geburtstag,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 14 June 1940: 5. 75. L. Landau, “Das jüdische Element bei Gustav Mahler,” 70. 76. “Ich bin dreifach heimatlos: als Böhme unter den Österreichern, als Österreicher unter den Deutschen und als Jude in der ganzen Welt” (“I am three times homeless: as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world”). Alma Mahler, Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler/Alma Mahler-Werfel. Briefe an Alma Mahler/Gustav Mahler, ed. Donald Mitchell (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1971), 137. Translated in Susan M. Filler, “Mahler as a Jew in the Literature,” Shofar 18, no. 4 (Summer 2000): 62. 77. Kurt Singer, Speech on Bruckner and Mahler of 30 January 1942, Kurt Singer Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

208

notes to pages 141–42

78. Susanna Wisten-Weyl, in a phone conversation with the author, 13 March 2006. 79. Meyer, in Henryk M. Broder and Eike Geisel, Premiere und Progrom: der Jüdische Kulturbund 1933–1941 (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag GmbH, 1992), 142. 80. Ibid., 142–43. 81. Micha Michalowitz, “Die Mahler-Sinfonie im Jüdischen Kulturbund,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 7 March 1941: 5. 82. Ibid. 83. Meyer, interview in Broder and Geisel, 142. 84. Peter Ohlson, in conversation with the author, 13 March 2006. 85. See Goldsmith, 261–64. A document in the Fritz-Wisten-Archiv at the Akademie der Künste from a collection of 1939–41 contains a tribute to Guttmann and describes his death as a sudden attack in the middle of singing. See handwritten document in Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. It is interesting to note that Ludwig Misch describes the song recital in the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt program with no mention of Guttmann’s death. In fact, he concludes the article as follows: “The whole performance was a great artistic success” (“Die ganze Veranstaltung war ein großer künstlerischer Erfolg”). Ludwig Misch, “Wort—Lied—Ton: Wilhelm Israel Guttmann singt,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 21 February 1941: 5. With negativity already less than acceptable in reviews of concerts, this omission may have to do with the newspaper’s desire to remain a positive force in Jewish communities. 86. Karl Wiener, Program notes from the performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony, dated 27 February 1941, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 87. Morten Solvik, “Mahler’s Untimely Modernism,” in Perspectives on Gustav Mahler, ed. Jeremy Barham (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 171. 88. Quoted in Christopher Jarret Page, “Leonard Bernstein and the Resurrection of Gustav Mahler” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2000), 30. 89. Adolf Weissmann, Die Musik in der Weltkrise (Stuttgart: Deutsche VerlagsAnstalt, 1922), 108. Translated in Painter, 186. 90. With Heine in mind, Gerhard Thrum de‹nes Zerrissenheit as “that inner powerlessness to lend continuity to an idea or a sentiment, to exercise control over one’s heart or mind, that constant medley of thoughts and feelings which are at once in‹nitely delicate and coarsely sensual, longing and mocking, romantically dream-like and crudely realistic—that is . . . ‘Zerrissenheit.’” Quoted in Israel Tabak, Judaic Lore in Heine: The Heritage of a Poet (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1948), 187. 91. Leonard Bernstein, Findings (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 255. 92. Lea de‹nes a marginal man as “any individual who is simultaneously a member by ascription, self-reference, or achievement of two or more groups whose social de‹nitions and cultural norms are distinct from each other.” Henry A. Lea, Gustav Mahler: Man on the Margin (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1985), 11. 93. After World War II, many musicologists and music lovers turned to the music of those victimized by the Nazi regime. Postwar West German composers, for example, shunned any association with music heralded by the Nazis, turning instead to the “de-

notes to pages 142–44

209

generate” artists of Nazi musical propaganda. See Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, “Germans as the ‘People of Music’: Genealogy of an Identity,” in Music and German National Identity, ed. Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 28–29. 94. Edward Hanslick, Die moderne Oper: Kritiken und Studien (Berlin: A. Hofmann, 1875), vii. Translated in Gundula Kreuzer, “Zurück zu Verdi: The ‘Verdi Renaissance’ and Musical Culture in the Weimar Republic,” Studi Verdiani 13 (1998): 118. 95. Micha Michalowitz, “Gustav Mahlers Zweite Sinfonie: Zur Aufführung im Jüdischen Kulturbund am 27. Februar,” Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 21 February 1941: 5. 96. Quoted in Michael Lawton, “Return of Jews Who Loved Mozart,” New York Times, 22 April 1992, Werner Golde Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 97. Goldsmith, 267. 98. Viktor Ullmann had studied with Schoenberg and adopted his musical language in Variationen und Doppelfuge über ein Klavierstück von Arnold Schoenberg, based on Schoenberg’s op. 19, no. 4—the earliest version of which dates from 1925. With his studies at the Prague Conservatory, from 1935 to 1937, Ullmann also experimented with a quarter-tone system in his Sonata in B  Minor for clarinet and piano. This all changed during the early 1940s. Though his communion with Anthroposophy in the 1930s played a role, this evolution has clear ties to the political context. On 8 September 1942, Ullmann, along with his third wife, arrived in Terezín. There he became aware of his Jewish identity and arranged Hebrew and Yiddish songs. He also wrote the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis, during which the Emperor (Hitler) is taken by death, a death depicted in the work as a relief and release. Perhaps more telling, however, are his seven piano sonatas. Ullmann wrote the ‹rst four before his imprisonment. The ‹rst, from 1936, Ullmann described as follows: “The principal subjects in three tonalities . . . [but] what apparently is happening is the linking of the twelve tonalities and their related minor keys. It seems that I was always striving for a 12-tone system on a tonal basis, similar to the merging of major and minor keys.” The following three sonatas, which were similarly complex, were dedicated to Hans Büchenbucher, the president of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany at the time, the Hungarian pianist Juliette Arányi, and Alice HerzSommer, an active pianist in Czechoslovakia and Germany before the war, respectively. The ‹fth sonata was composed in Terezín. The work, dedicated to his wife, is joyful and, unlike the earlier sonatas, achieves a new tonal clarity. Ullmann completed the ‹nal sonata, dated 22 August 1944, just a few weeks before he was sent to Auschwitz on 16 October and murdered. The piece, dedicated to his children, has an uncharacteristic amount of autobiographical allusions, including references to Czech and Slovak national songs, Ullmann’s earlier work, and even the composer’s Jewish heritage with a Hebrew folk song. Many other composers in the 1930s and 1940s, such as Kurt Weill and even Arnold Schoenberg, to some extent turned inward in this general way, confronting their identities in music. See Joza Karas, Music in Terezín, 1941–1945 (New York: Beaufort Books Publishers, 1985), 111–17, 120; and Ullmann to Karel Reiner, August 1938, quoted in John Paul Healey, “The Solo Piano Music of Viktor Ullmann: From Prague to the Holo-

210

notes to pages 144–47

caust” (University of Cincinnati, Doctor of Musical Arts thesis, 2001), 110–11, 224. This evolution was highlighted in Kristof Boucquet’s presentation in London, on 10 April 2008, at the conference “The Impact of Nazism on Musical Development in the Twentieth Century.” 99. See Page, “Leonard Bernstein and the Resurrection of Gustav Mahler,” 10. See also Lewis M. Smoley, “Mahler Conducted and Recorded: From the Concert Hall to DVD,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mahler, ed. Jeremy Barham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 254–55. 100. Mark Roseman, The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002), 57, 81–94. 101. The secret police declared, “Auf Grund des [paragraph] 1 der Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutze von Volk und Staat vom 28. 2. 33 löse ich mit dem heutigen Tage den Jüdischen Kulturbund in Deutschland e.V., Berlin, auf.” Letter from secret police, 11 September 1941, Vereinsregister Berlin, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 102. Bergmeier, Eisler, and Lotz, 135. 103. Record collections that were not con‹scated were either taken by Aryan neighbors or destroyed in bombings. Ibid., 141. 104. Ibid. 105. See ibid., 201–5. 106. Stengel and Gerigk, 6. Translated in Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 66. 107. Dirk Rupnow, “‘Ihr müßt sein, auch wenn ihr nicht mehr seid’: The Jewish Central Museum in Prague and Historical Memory in the Third Reich,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 16, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 23–53. 108. Quoted in ibid., 42. 109. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978). 110. This is related to Jacques Lacan’s “mirror stage,” or the theory that a child’s selfidentity is constituted by simultaneously identifying with and differentiating itself from its re›ection in the mirror. That is to say, the child begins to understand its body in relation to an exterior Other, who is “in a contrasting size (un relief de stature)” and an inverted symmetry. The mirror stage occurs during the period from the sixth to the eighteenth month of the infant’s life. See Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 2. This process is far from positive in Derrida’s view and necessarily involves not only the relation to the Other but the relation to what it is not—what it lacks—thus establishing a violent power structure between resultant poles, such as man/woman and in this case Jew/Aryan. See Stuart Hall, “Introduction: Who Needs Identity,” in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996), 4–5. 111. Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 8. 112. Ibid., 70–71. 113. Letter from Fritz Wisten to Dr. Eppstein, 27 September 1941, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

notes to pages 148–50

211

Epilogue 1. Margot Wachsmann-Singer, in Henryk M. Broder and Eike Geisel, Premiere und Pogrom: der Jüdische Kulturbund 1933–1941 (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag GmbH, 1992), 196. 2. Lenart, in Broder and Geisel, 248. 3. What position Singer was offered is unclear. In a document about Kurt Singer, held at the Akademie der Künste (Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung, 1.53.13, 5), it is claimed that Singer was offered a chair at Yale University while in the United States. However, a separate note about Singer (Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung 1.53.13,7) claims that he was offered a post as a member and lecturer of the faculty for musicology at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in New York, and only later, once the war had begun, was he offered a post at Yale University. 4. Eike Geisel, “Da Capo in Holland,” in Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933–1941, ed. Akademie der Künste (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992), 193. 5. Since the Nazis only established the Jewish Theater, originally the Hollandsche Schouwburg, as Jewish, along the lines of the League, in 1941, the organization did not have the time or luxury to engage in debates about Jewish music. Geisel, “Da Capo in Holland,” 205–6. For other differences between the League and the Jewish Theater, as well as resistance in the Netherlands, see ibid., 201–2. 6. In total, 107,000 Jews were deported from the Netherlands. See Eberhard Jäckel and Lea Rosh, “Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland”: Deportation und Ermorderung der Juden, Kollaboration und Verweigerung in Europa (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campte, 1990), 91. 7. Geisel, “Da Capo in Holland,” 196. See also “Hollandsche Schouwburg: monument, tentoonstelling,” pamphlet distributed by the Hollandsche Schouwburg, Amsterdam. 8. Geisel, “Da Capo in Holland,” 196. See also Sophie Fetthauer, “Kurt Singer,” Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NS-Zeit, ed. Claudia Maurer Zenck and Peter Petersen (University of Hamburg), http://www.lexm.unihamburg.de/object /lexm_lexmperson_00001059. 9. Der Stürmer, edited by Julius Streicher, was the most vicious anti-Jewish newspaper in the Third Reich. 10. Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–1941, trans. Martin Chalmers (New York: Modern Library, 1998), 189. 11. Letter from Kroner to friends and family, 13 April 1992, Werner Golde Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 12. Lenart, in Broder and Geisel, 249. 13. Ibid., 243. 14. Ibid., 247. 15. See Herbert Freeden, Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, Paul Siebeck, 1964), 268.

212

notes to pages 150–55

16. Baumann’s Memoirs, quoted and translated in Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries, ed. Monika Richarz and trans. Stella P. Rosenfeld and Sidney Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 384. 17. Werner Levie describes his interaction with Hinkel on 12 November 1938 and explains that the list he gave to Hinkel had the names of 120 German-Jews, not 200 as Baumann claims. Werner Levie, “Arbeitsbericht des Jüdischen Kulturbundes in Deutschland e.V.,” for 1 October 1938 through 30 June 1939, Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. See also Baumann’s Memoirs, quoted and translated in Richarz, 384. 18. Baumann’s Memoirs, quoted and translated in Richarz, 385. 19. Brandt, quoted in Broder and Geisel, 126. 20. Susan J. Eischeid,“Kurt Michaelis—A Life in Music,” Double Reed 22, no. 3 (1999): 56. 21. An interview with Henry Meyer in “The Inextinguishable Symphony Project: A Video Introduction,” produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project (preliminary video provided to the author). 22. Herbert Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, trans. William Templer (Providence: Berg, 1993), 94. This statement appeared in an article devoted to Kurt Singer, who had died ‹ve months before. 23. Rab Bennett, Under the Shadow of the Swastika: The Moral Dilemmas of Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler’s Europe (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 191. 24. Quoted in Bennett, 216. 25. Ibid., 19. 26. Shirli Gilbert, Music in the Holocaust Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 147. 27. Quoted in Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 423. 28. Lenart, in Broder and Geisel, 247. Likewise, Hildegard Brilling, who worked as an administrator in the League until 1939, recalls that her father always said, “I give them six years, no more” (“Sechs Jahre geb’ ich dem, nicht mehr”). Broder and Geisel, 228. 29. Anneliese Landau, “Bridges to the Past” (reconstructed by Anneliese from her memories and based on letters), donated to the author by the Landau family, 46. 30. Ruth Abraham, “Where the Wolves Say Goodnight: Memoirs of a Mother Hitler Couldn’t Catch (1999),” Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 25. 31. Margot Weintraub Sisman (former member of the Jewish Culture League in Berlin), in a conversation with the author, 8 December 2004. 32. Alan E. Steinweis, “Hans Hinkel and German Jewry, 1933–1941,” in Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs, ed. Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 23. 33. Rebecca Rovit, “An Artistic Mission in Nazi Berlin: The Jewish Kulturbund Theater as Sanctuary,” in Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs, ed. Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 35. 34. Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany (New York: John Wiley, 2000), 298.

notes to pages 155–58

213

35. Quoted in Goldsmith, 299. 36. Alice Levie, in Broder and Geisel, 158. 37. See, for example, a letter from William Steinberg, the director of the orchestra of the Jüdischer Kulturbund Rhein-Main, on behalf of the ›utist Erich Toeplitz. In it, Steinberg explained, “Mr. Erich Toeplitz was the ‹rst ›utist in the Rhine-Main Culture League Orchestra from May 1, 1934 until May 6, 1936. . . . Erich Toeplitz can and must hold a top position in an orchestra” (“Herr Erich Toeplitz war vom I. Mai 1934 bis zum 6. Mai 1936 als I. Flötist im Kulturbundorchester Rhein-Main tätig. . . . Erich Toeplitz kann und muss eine erste Position in einem Orchester bekleiden”). Letter from William Steinberg, 8 May 1936, Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 38. Renate Lenart (wife of Ernest Lenart and former member of the Berlin Jewish Culture League), in a conversation with the author, 16 September 2005. 39. Ibid. 40. Freeden, in Broder and Geisel, 266. 41. Quoted in Rovit, 151. 42. Bennett, 176. 43. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). 44. Michael R. Marrus, “Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust,” Journal of Contemporary History 30, no. 1 (January 1995): 95–100. 45. Marrus, 94. Werner Rings gives a similar gradation for collaboration in Life with the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler’s Europe, 1939–1945, trans. J. Maxwell Brownjohn (New York: Doubleday, 1982), 86–128. 46. Quoted in Marrus, 95. 47. See Philip V. Bohlman, “Musik als Widerstand: Jüdische Musik in Deutschland 1933–1940,” Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung 40 (1995): 49–74. 48. See the description of resistance in Gilbert, 2. 49. Gilbert, 7. 50. Letter from Kroner to friends and family, 13 April 1992, Werner Golde Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. 51. Letter of September 1937, in Broder and Geisel, 209, quoted and translated in Goldsmith, 129–30. 52. Ruth Anselm-Herzog, in Broder and Geisel, 86. See also Goldsmith, 301–2. 53. Letter from Kurt Singer to Ruth Falkenstein, the Intendanzsekretärin, 8 December 1938, Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung, Akademie der Künste. 54. Quoted in Sylvia Rogge-Gau, Die doppelte Wurzel des Daseins: Julius Bab und der Jüdische Kulturbund Berlin (Berlin: Metropol, 1999), 153. 55. Letter from Singer, who was then in Amsterdam, to Anneliese Landau, 12 February 1939, Anneliese-Landau-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 56. Landau, Memoirs, donated to the author by the Landau family, 78. 57. Ruth Abelsdorff (formerly Falkenstein), in Broder and Geisel, 239.

Sources Consulted

Unpublished Works Banks, Paul. “The Early Social and Musical Environment of Gustav Mahler.” PhD dissertation, Trinity, 1980. Healey, John Paul. “The Solo Piano Music of Viktor Ullmann: From Prague to the Holocaust.” Doctor of Musical Arts thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2001. “Hollandsche Schouwburg: monument, tentoonstelling.” Pamphlet distributed by the Hollandsche Schouwburg, Amsterdam. Kreuzer, Gundula. “Verdi and German Culture, 1871–1945.” PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 2004. Landau, Anneliese. “Bridges to the Past” (reconstructed by Anneliese Landau from her memories and based on letters). Donated to the author by the Landau family. Landau, Anneliese. Memoirs. Donated to the author by the Landau family. Móricz, Klára. “Jewish Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Art Music.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1999. Page, Christopher Jarret. “Leonard Bernstein and the Resurrection of Gustav Mahler.” PhD dissertation, University of California Press, 2000. Singer, Kurt. “Vom Unfug musikalischer Kritik.” Kurt Singer Collection, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati. Smith, Susannah Lockwood. “Soviet Arts Policy, Folk Music, and National Identity: The Piatnitskii State Russian Folk Choir, 1927–1945.” PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1997. Wolters-Fredlund, Benita. “‘We shall go forward with our Songs into the Fight for a Better Life’: Identity and Musical Meaning in the History of the Toronto Jewish Folk Choir, 1925–1959.” PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2005.

Akademie der Künste, Berlin Concert program from 1936 of Berlin Kulturbund Orchestra performing Bloch’s Concerto Grosso, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Mahler), and Tschaikowsky’s Symphony no. 6. Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung.

215

216

sources consulted

Document, 1.53.13,5. Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung. Document, 1.53.13,7. Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung. Fleischer, Herbert. “Verdis ‘Nebukadnezar,’” League Program (April 1935). Fritz-WistenArchiv. “Geschäftsordnung für die Leitung des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden.” Fritz-WistenArchiv. Jewish Culture League program for 1936 concert featuring Bloch’s Concerto Grosso. Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung. The Jewish Culture League’s “Orientierungs-Bericht,” dated February 1934. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Landau, Anneliese. “Beginn der 2. Konzertwinters,” in the League’s program of October 1934. Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung. Landau, Anneliese. “Die Dezember-Konzerte,” in the Program of December 1933 to accompany the League’s performance of Othello. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Landau, Anneliese. “Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, in Observance of the 100th Anniversary of Their Deaths.” Anneliese-Landau-Archiv. Landau, Anneliese. Speech. Anneliese-Landau-Archiv. Letter from Bloch to Landau. 10 August 1946. Anneliese-Landau-Archiv. Letter from Hans Hinkel to Kurt Singer. 15 July 1933. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Letter from Kurt Singer in Amsterdam to Anneliese Landau. 12 February 1939. Anneliese-Landau-Archiv. Letter from Kurt Singer to Ruth Falkenstein, the Intendanzsekretärin. 8 December 1938. Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung. Letter from William Steinberg. 8 May 1936. Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung. Letter from Fritz Wisten to Dr. Eppstein. 27 September 1941. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Levie, Werner. “Aktennotiz.” 16 December 1938. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Levie, Werner. “Arbeitsbericht des Jüdischen Kulturbundes in Deutschland e.V.,” for 1 October 1938 through 30 June 1939. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. “Orientierungs-Bericht.” February 1934. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. “Orientierungsbericht VI.” March 1934. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Program. 21 April 1936. Jüdischer Kulturbund Sammlung. Rosenstock, Joseph. “Orchester und Oper.” In “Ein Jahr Kulturbund Deutscher Juden: Den Mitgliedern des Kulturbundes Überreicht von der Leitung des Kulturbundes.” September 1934. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. “Satzung des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden.” Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Singer, Kurt. “Allgemeine zur Gesamtlage.” 14 June 1935. Fritz-Wisten-Archive. Singer, Kurt. “Allgemeines” (a circular to League personnel dated 9 April 1936). FritzWisten-Archiv. Singer, Kurt. “Der Jüdische Kulturbund Wirbt: Vorschläge.” 6 April 1937. Fritz-WistenArchiv. Singer, Kurt. “Eröffnungsrede zu Beginn der Kulturtagung.” Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Singer, Kurt. Speech on Bruckner and Mahler of 30 January 1942. Kurt Singer Archiv.

sources consulted

217

Wiener, Karl. Program notes from the performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony, dated 27 February 1941. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Wiener, Karl. “Über Mendelssohns Sommernachtstraum-Musik.” In the Program of December 1936. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv. Wisten, Fritz. “Bericht über die Arbeit des Jüdischen Kulturbundes in Deutschland e.V. in der Zeit von 1.9.1939–31.8.1940.” Fritz-Wisten-Archiv.

Centrum Judaicum Archiv, Berlin Letter from Käthe Mende to Käte Fischer. 1 August 1937. Centrum Judaicum Archiv, 1, 75C FR 1, Nr. 28, 9832, Berlin.

Leo Baeck Institute, New York Abraham, Ruth. “Where the Wolves Say Goodnight: Memoirs of a Mother Hitler Couldn’t Catch (1999).” “Abschrift: Satzung des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden E.V.” Vereinsregister Berlin. “Aus: Reichspost, Wien vom 29, 8, 1938—‘Rettung der abendländischen Musik vor dem drohenden Verfall,’ Dr. Goebbels auf der Reichsmusikfestwoche.” Wiener Library Archive. Baumann, Ken (Kurt). “Memoiren.” Baumann, Ken (Kurt). “Plan zur Errichtung eines Deutsch-Jüdischen Kulturbundes mit eigenem Theater, eigenen Konzerten & Vorträgen . . .” Juedischer Kulturbund Collection. Document. 25 July 1933. Vereinsregister Berlin. Holde, Heida Hermanns. “Memoirs.” Kastner, Rudolf. “Haendel und sein Werk.” In Program from the Jewish Culture League performance of Monday 7 May and Tuesday 8 May 1934 of Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, directed by Kurt Singer in Berlin. Rudolf Zielenziger Collection. Landau, Anneliese. “Die Februar-Konzerte.” In the League Program for February 1934. Letter from the “Amtsgericht Charlottenburg” to the League. 24 May 1934. Vereinsregister Berlin. Letter from the Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt (Berlin). 13 August 1935. Letter from Kroner to friends and family. 13 April 1992. Werner Golde Collection. Letter from Secret Police. 11 September 1941. Vereinsregister Berlin. Letter from Singer to the “Amtsgericht Charlottenburg.” 18 May 1934. Vereinsregister Berlin. Letter from Werfel to Bab. 28 August 1934. Julius Bab Collection. Letter to Arno Nadel in Berlin. 12 August 1934. Ernest Bloch Collection. Misch, Ludwig. “Erinnerungen an die Zeit des nationalsozialistischen Terrors.” Program notes for the Jewish Culture League’s performance of Bloch’s Sacred Service on June 25, 1934. Juedischer Kulturbund Collection.

218

sources consulted

“Protokoll der Tagung der jüdischen Kulturbünde Deutschlands am Sonnabend, den 27. April 1935 und Sonntag, den 28. April 1935.” Juedischer Kulturbund collection. Schoenberg, Jakob. “About Jewish Music.” Jakob Schoenberg collection. Stern, Martin O. “How do you like America?”

Wiener Library, London Document 575. Letter to the “Kreis I der NSDAP zu Händen der Propagandaleiters Pg. Hickethier” (Berlin-Spandau) from the Berlin Charlottenburg Propoganda-Amt. 19 November 1934.

Newspapers and Magazines American Hebrew. 21 February 1936. B.T. [Berliner Tageblatt?]. [?] 1936. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. CV-Zeitung (Berlin). 26 May 1933; 16 November 1933; 3 May 1934; 17 January 1935; 5 March 1936; 22 May 1936; 6 October 1938. Daily Telegraph. 3 August 1935. Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Denver Post. 16 March 1935. Hanns-Eisler-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. 28 January 1941. Deutsche Kultur-Wacht (Berlin). 9 September 1933; 7 October 1933. Echo. 31 January 1938. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Evening Standard. [?] June 1937. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Foreign Affairs. April 1936. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Gemeindeblatt, Leipzig. 18 December 1936. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Hamburger Familienblatt. 29 November 1934. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Israelitische Gemeinde-Zeitung. 1 June 1936. Karl Adler Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Israelitisches Familienblatt. 11 October 1933; 14 November 1933. Quoted in Volker Dahm, “Kulturelles und geistiges Leben,” in Die Juden in Deutschland 1933–1945: Leben unter nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft, ed. Wolfgang Benz, 132. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988; 23 November 1933. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; 1 August 1935; 4 February 1937; 11 February 1937. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Jewish Telegraph Agency. 2 May 1934. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung. [?] April 1935. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; 15 January 1936. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Jüdische Liberale. 15 May 1934. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Jüdische Rundschau (Berlin). 25 July 1933; 4 October 1933; 17 November 1933; 13 March

sources consulted

219

1934; 10 May 1934; 14 September 1934; 30 October 1934; 22 February 1935; 16 July 1935; 9 April 1935; 18 June 1935; 15 May 1936; 8, 11 September 1936; 7, 16 October 1936; 4 December 1936; 17 September 1937; 6 September 1938; 4 October 1938. Jüdisches Gemeindeblatt. 9 May 1937. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; 14 April 1935. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt. 10 March 1939; 5 May 1939; 23 January 1940; 29 March 1940; 12 April 1940; 14 June 1940; 21 February 1941; 7 March 1941; 18 July 1941. Fritz-WistenArchiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Manchester Guardian. 20 September 1934. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York; 29 October 1934. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York; 27 June 1935. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York; 2 November 1936. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York; 8 June 1938. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute; 17 February 1942. Wiener Library Archive, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Morning Post. 14 November 1936. Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. New York Times. 9 April 1933; 18 June 1933; 10 December 1933; 9, 25 September 1936; 16 February 1936; 22 March 1942; 3 May 1942; 2 June 1945; 23 January 1949; 22 April 1992. Werner Golde Collection, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Pariser Tageszeitung. 11 September 1936. Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Der Schild. 26 January 1934. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; 29 June 1934. Quoted in Stephen Stompor, Jüdisches Musik- und Theaterleben unter dem NSStaat, 72. Hannover: Europäisches Zentrum für Jüdische Musik, 2001; 8 February 1935. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin; [?] 12 April 1935. Fritz-Wisten-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Selbstwehr. 1 November 1935. Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York; 3 January 1936. Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Times (London). 20 August 1935. Wiener Library Archives, Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Völkischer Beobachter (Munich). 14 April 1934. Die Wahrheit. 21 May 1937.

Personal Interviews Hirsch, Martha Sommer. Former performer with the Frankfurt Jewish Culture League orchestra. In an interview with Gail Prensky, November 2003. Produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project. Transcript provided to the author. Klestadt-Jonas, Hilda. Former member of the Jewish Culture League in Düsseldorf. Conversation with the author, 8 August 2004. Lenart, Renate. Wife of Ernest Lenart and former member of the Berlin Jewish Culture League. Conversation with the author, 16 September 2005.

220

sources consulted

Meyer, Henry. Former member of the Berlin Jewish Culture League orchestra. Interview with Martin Goldsmith, 2001. Produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project. Transcript provided to the author. Meyer, Henry. Interview in “The Inextinguishable Symphony Project: A Video Introduction.” Produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project. Preliminary video provided to the author. Michaelis, Kurt. Former member of the Berlin Jewish Culture League orchestra. Interview with Gail Prensky, November 2003. Produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project. Transcript provided to the author. Ohlson, Peter. Stepson of Rudolphf Schwarz, conductor in the Jewish Culture League in Berlin. Conversation with the author, 13 March 2006. Sisman, Margot Weintraub. Former member of the Jewish Culture League in Berlin. Conversation with the author, 8 December 2004. Tennenbaum, Silvia. Hans Wilhelm Steinberg’s stepdaughter. Interview with Gail Prensky, November 2003. Produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project. Transcript provided to the author. Treitler, Kurt. Former member of the Jewish Culture League in Berlin. Conversation with the author, 21 April 2006. Wachsman, Margot. Kurt Singer’s daughter. Interview with Gail Prensky, November 2003. Produced by Gail Prensky, executive producer, The Inextinguishable Symphony Project. Transcript provided to the author. Wisten-Weyl, Susann. Daughter of the last leader of the Jewish Culture League, Fritz Wisten, and member of the organization. Conversation with the author, 13 March 2006.

Musical Scores Bloch, Ernest. Avodath Hakodesch. Boston: C. C. Birchard, 1909. Handel, George Frideric. Judas Maccabaeus. Libretto by Thomas Morell. New York: G. Schirmer, [n.d.]. Mahler, Gustav. Symphonie Nr. 2 (c-moll). Ed. Internationalen Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft, Wien. Vienna: Universal Edition, 1971. Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix. Drei Psalmen op. 78. Ed. David Brodbeck (Carus). Schubert, Franz. “Der 92. Psalm.” In Complete Works: Breitkopf & Härtel Critical Edition of 1884–1897, vol. 12. New York: Dover, 1995. Schubert, Franz. “Der 23. Psalm.” In Complete Works: Breitkopf & Härtel Critical Edition of 1884–1897, vol. 12. New York: Dover, 1995. Schubert, Franz. Complete Song Cycles: Die schöne Müllerin, Die Winterreise, Schwanengesang. Ed. Eusebius Mandyczewski, with translations by Henry S. Drinker. New York: Dover, 1970; originally published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1895. Verdi, Giuseppe. Nebucodonoser. Libretto by Temistocle Solera. Ed. Roger Parker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

sources consulted

221

Other Published Works Adorno, Theodor W. In Search of Wagner. Ed. Rodney Livingstone. New York: Verso, 1991. Adorno, Theodor W. The Jargon of Authenticity. Trans. Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. Almanach. Ed. Kulturbund Deutscher Juden Berlin. Berlin: Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, 1935. Alperson, Philip. “Schopenhauer and Musical Revelation.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40, no. 2 (Winter 1981): 155–66. Amtliche Mitteilungen der Reichsmusikkammer (September 1934), 22. Quoted and translated in Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 78. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Re›ections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 1983. Applegate, Celia. “The Past and Present of Hausmusik in the Third Reich.” In Music and Nazism: Art under Tyranny, 1933–1945, ed. Michael H. Kater and Albrecht Riethmüller, 136–49. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2003. Applegate, Celia, and Pamela Potter. “Germans as the ‘People of Music’: Genealogy of an Identity.” In Music and German National Identity, ed. Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter, 1–35. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Arendt, Hannah. “From Eichmann in Jerusalem.” In The Portable Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr, 313–88. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Aster, Misha. “Das Reichsorchester”: Das Berliner Philharmoniker und der Nationalsozialismus. Munich: Siedler Verlag, 2007. Atkins, E. Taylor. “Can Japanese Sing the Blues? ‘Japanese Jazz’ and the Problem of Authenticity.” In Japan Pop! Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Timothy J. Craig, 27–59. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2000. Avenary, Hanoch, ed. Kantor Salomon Sulzer und seine Zeit: Eine Dokumentation. Hohenems, Austria: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1985. Bab, Julius. “Kulturarbeit der deutscher Juden.” Der Morgen (November 1933): 324–26. Bab, Julius. Leben und Tod des deutschen Judentums (written in Summer 1939). Ed. Klaus Siebenhaar. Berlin: Argon, 1988. Badura-Skoda, Paul. “Possibilities and Limitations of Stylistic Criticism in the Dating of Schubert’s ‘Great’ C Major Symphony.” In Schubert Studies, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda and Peter Branscombe, 187–208. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Baldassarre, Antonio. “The Iconographic Schubert: The Reception of Schubert in the Mirror of His Time.” RIDIM/RCMI (Fall 1997): 39–52. Balthazar, Scott L. “The Forms of Set Pieces.” In The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, ed. Scott L. Balthazar, 49–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Baresel, Alfred. Giuseppe Verdi. Leben und Werk. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1938.

222

sources consulted

Bartók, Béla. Béla Bartók Essays. Ed. Benjamin Suchoff. London: Faber and Faber, 1976. Baudrillard, Jean. The System of Objects. Trans. James Benedict. New York: Verso, 1996. Beckerman, Michael B. New Worlds of Dvorák: Searching in America for the Composer’s Inner Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. Bedürftig, Friedemann, and Christian Zentner, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. Trans. Amy Hackett. New York: Macmillan, 1991. Bellman, Jonathan. The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993. Benecke, Otto. “Die Kulturp›ege der Gemeinden und Gemeindeverbände.” In Handbuch der Reichskulturkammer, ed. Hans Hinkel, 325–42. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Politik und Wirtschaft Gmbh., 1937. Benjamin, Walter. “Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting.” In Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, 59–68. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Bennett, Rab. Under the Shadow of the Swastika: The Moral Dilemmas of Resistance and Collaboration in Hitler’s Europe. New York: New York University Press, 1999. Benz, Richard. Die ewigen Meister. Jena: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1935. Benz, Richard. Von den drei Welten der Musik. Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1939. Bergmeier, Horst J. P., Ejal Jakob Eisler, and Rainer E. Lotz. Vorbei . . . Beyond Recall: Dokumentation jüdischen Musiklebens in Berlin 1933–1938. . . A Record of Jewish Musical Life in Nazi Berlin, 1933–1938. Hambergen: Bear Family Records, 2001. Bergmeier, Horst J. P., and Rainer E. Lotz. Hitler’s Airwaves: The Inside Story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Berkley, George. Hitler’s Gift: The Story of Theresienstadt. Boston: Brandon Books, 1993. Berl, Heinrich. Das Judentum in der Musik. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1926. Quoted and translated in Alexander L. Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew, 195. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Berlin, Isaiah. “The Naiveté of Verdi.” In The Verdi Companion, ed. William Weaver and Martin Chusid, 1–7. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975. Bernstein, Leonard. Findings. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Bernstein, Richard J. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. Bie, Oscar. Schubert, the Man. Trans. Jean Starr Untermayer. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1928. Bilski, Emily D., and Emily Braun. “The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons.” In Jewish Women and Their Salons: The Power of Conversation, ed. Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun, 1–148. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Binder, A. W. Studies in Jewish Music: Collected Writings of A. W. Binder. Ed. Irene Heskes. New York: Bloch, 1971. Birnbaum, Eduard. “Franz Schubert as a Composer of Synagogue Music—Translated from Allgemeinzeitung des Judentums, 1898.” In Contributions to a Historical Study of Jewish Music, ed. Eric Werner, 91–103. [New York]: Ktav Publishing House, 1976. Bitter, Carl Hermann. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Oratoriums (1872). Quoted and trans-

sources consulted

223

lated in Howard E. Smither, A History of the Oratorio, vol. 4. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Black, Edwin. The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine. Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books, 1999. Bland, Kalman P. The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Af‹rmations and Denials of the Visual. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Blessinger, Karl. Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mahler: Drei Kapitel Judentum in der Musik. Berlin: Bernhard Haynefeld Verlag, 1939. Bloch, Ernest. “Man and Music.” Musical Quarterly 19, no. 4 (October 1933): 374–81. Bloch, Ernest. “My Sacred Service.” In Ernest Bloch, Creative Spirit: A Program Source Book, ed. Suzanne Bloch and Irene Heskes, 11–16. New York: Jewish Music Council of the National Jewish Welfare Board, 1976. Bloch, Suzanne, and Irene Heskes. Ernest Bloch, Creative Spirit: A Program Source Book. New York: Jewish Music Council of the National Jewish Welfare Board, 1976. Boas, Jacob. “German Jewry’s Search for Renewal in the Hitler Era as Re›ected in the Major Jewish Newspapers (1933–1938).” Journal of Modern History 53, no. 1 (March 1981): 1001–24. Boetticher, Wolfgang. Robert Schumann: Einführung in Persönlichkeit und Werk. Berlin: Bernhard Hahnefeld Verlag, 1941. Bohlman, Philip V. “Musik als Widerstand: Jüdische Musik in Deutschland 1933–1940.” Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung 40 (1995): 49–74. Bohlman, Philip V. The World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine, 1936–1940: Jewish Musical Life on the Eve of World War II. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Bonard, Waldemar. Die gefesselte Muse: das Marionettentheater im Jüdischen Kulturbund 1935–1937. Munich: Buchendorfer Verlag, 1995. Bookbinder, Paul. Weimar Germany: The Republic of the Reasonable. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Botstein, Leon. “Mendelssohn and the Jews.” Musical Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 210–19. Botstein, Leon.“Music, Femininity, and Jewish Identity: The Tradition and Legacy of the Salon.” In Jewish Women and Their Salons: The Power of Conversation, ed. Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Botstein, Leon. “Realism Transformed: Franz Schubert and Vienna. In The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs, 15–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Botstein, Leon. “Whose Gustav Mahler? Reception, Interpretation, and History.” In Mahler and His World, ed. Karen Painter, 1–53. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Brecht, Bertolt. Über experimentelles Theater. Ed. Werner Hecht. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970. Brenner, Helmut. “National Socialist Strategies for Denationalisation and ‘Ethical Change’ through Music and Their Practical Realisation as Attempted in Slovenian Lower Styria, 1941–1945.” Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung (1990): 95–106.

224

sources consulted

Brenner, Michael. The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Brenner, Michael. “The Weimar Years (1919–1932).” In Jews in Berlin, ed. Andreas Nachama, Julius H. Schoeps, and Hermann Simon, trans. Michael S. Cullen and Allison Brown, 137–80. Berlin: Henschel Verlag, 2002. Brenner, Michael, and Derek J. Penslar. Introduction to In Search of Jewish Community: Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria, 1918–1933, ed. Michael Brenner and Derek J. Penslar. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Breuer, Mordechai. Modernity Within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany. Trans. Elizabeth Petuchowski. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Brod, Max. “Gustav Mahlers jüdische Melodien.” Musikblätter des Anbruch 2 (1920): 378–79. Broder, Henryk M., and Eike Geisel. Premiere und Pogrom: der Jüdische Kulturbund 1933–1941. Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag GmbH, 1992. Brody, Elaine. “Schubert and Sulzer Revisited: A Recapitulation of the Events Leading to Schubert’s Setting in Hebrew of Psalm XCII, D 953.” In Schubert Studies: Problems of Style and Chronology, ed. Eva Badura-Skoda and Peter Branscombe, 47–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Brown, Clive. A Portrait of Mendelssohn. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Brown, Maurice J. E. Schubert: A Critical Biography. London: Macmillan, 1958. Bukofzer, Manfred F. Music in the Baroque Era: From Monteverdi to Bach. New York: W. W. Norton, 1947. Burnham, Scott. Beethoven Hero. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Burstein, Poundie. “Lyricism, Structure, and Gender in Schubert’s G major String Quartet.” Musical Quarterly 81, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 51–63. Caplan, Hannah, and Belinda Rosenblatt, ed. International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés, 1933–1945, vols. 1, 2. Munich: K. G. Sauer, 1983. Carr, Jonathan. Mahler: A Biography. Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1999. Chiesa, Mary Tibaldi. “Ernest Bloch—The Jewish Composer.” Musica Hebraica 1–2 (1938): 13–17. Childs, Barney, and Elliott Schwartz. Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. Christensen, Dieter. “Erich M. von Hornbostel, Carl Stumpf, and the Institutionalization of Comparative Musicology.” In Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology, ed. Bruno Nettl and Philip V. Bohlman, 201–9. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Clapham, John. “Dvorák and the American Indian.” In Dvorák in America, 1892–1895, ed. John C. Tibbets, 113–22. Portland: Amadeus Press, 1993. Cloonan, Martin, Marie Korpe, and Ole Reitov. “Music Censorship from Plato to the Present.” In Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and Social Control of Music, ed. Steven Brown and Ulrik Volgsten, 239–63. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. Conati, Marcello. “Between Past and Future: The Dramatic World of Rossini in Mosé in

sources consulted

225

Egitto and Moïse et Pharaon.” Nineteenth Century Music 4, no. 1 (Summer 1980): 32–47. Cook, Susan C. Opera for a New Republic: The Zeitopern of Krenek, Weill, and Hindemith. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988. Dahlhaus, Carl. Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth-Century. Trans. Mary Whittall. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980. Dahm, Volker. “Kulturelles und geistiges Leben.” In Die Juden in Deutschland 1933–1945: Leben unter nationalsozialistischer Herrschaft, ed. Wolfgang Benz. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988. Daverio, John. Robert Schumann: Herald of a “New Poetic Age.” New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Davies, Stephen, “Why Listen to Sad Music If It Makes One Feel Sad?” In Music and Meaning, ed. Jenefer Robinson, 242–53. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Dennis, David B. Beethoven in German Politics, 1870–1989. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Dennis, David B. “‘Honor Your German Masters’: The Use and Abuse of ‘Classical’ Composers in Nazi Propaganda.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 30, no. 2 (Winter 2002): 273–95. Dittrich, Marie-Agnes. “Kein grollender Titan: Franz Schubert, der Österreicher.” Hamburg Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 15 (1998): 191–201. “Dokument des Monats Juli 2002: New Tonfolie vom sogenannten ‘Volkssender’ (1935).” Sponsored by the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv. Available from http://www.dra.de/ online/dokument/2002/juli.html. Accessed 2 June 2006. Donakowski, Conrad L. A Muse for the Masses: Ritual and Music in an Age of Democratic Revolution, 1770–1870. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. Draughon, Francesca, and Raymond Knapp. “Gustav Mahler and the Crisis of Jewish Identity.” Echo: A Music-Centered Journal 3, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 1–45. Dümling, Albrecht. “The Target of Racial Purity: The ‘Degenerate Music’ Exhibition in Düsseldorf, 1938.” In Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, ed. Richard Etlin, 43–72. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Dürr, Walther. “Gott ist mein Hirte (D 706): Schuberts Vertonung des 23. Psalms in der Übersetzung von Moses Mendelssohn.” Württembergische Blätter für Kirchenmusik 57, no. 5 (1990): 171–76. Dürr, Walther. “Schubert’s Treatment of the Liturgical Mass Text.” In Goethe and Schubert: Across the Divide, ed. Lorraine Byrne and Dan Farrelly, 214–33. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2003. Düwell, Kurt. “Jewish Cultural Centers in Nazi Germany: Expectations and Accomplishments.” In The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to the Second World War, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Walter Schatzberg, 294–316. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1985.

226

sources consulted

Eckhard, John. “Music and Concentration Camps: An Approximation.” Journal of Musicological Research 20, no. 4 (2001): 269–323. Edelmann, Bernd. “Der bürgerliche Handel: Deutsche Händel-Rezeption von 1800 bis 1850.” Musik-Konzepte (January 2006): 23–51. Eichenauer, Richard. Musik und Rasse. Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1932. Eichenauer, Richard. Musik und Rasse. Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1937. Eischeid, Susan J. “Kurt Michaelis—A Life in Music.” Double Reed 22, no. 3 (1999): 53–60. Eisner, Thomas.“Fritz Busch: A Friend Remembered.” Musical Quarterly 85, no. 3 (2001): 456–76. Ellingson, Ter. The Myth of the Noble Savage. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. Elon, Amos. The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany, 1743–1933. New York: Henry Holt, 2002. The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. Ed. Christian Zentner and Friedemann Bedürftig.Trans. Amy Hackett. New York: Macmillan, 1991. Engels, Frederick, and Karl Marx. “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” Authorized English translation. Ed. Frederick Engels. New York: International Publishers, 1948. Esslin, Martin. Brecht, A Choice of Evils: A Critical Study of the Man, His Work, and His Opinions. London: Methuen Drama, 1985. Evans, Joan. “‘Diabolus triumphans’: Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat in Weimar and Nazi Germany.” In The Varieties of Musicology: Essays in Honor of Murray Lefkowitz, ed. John Daverio and John Ogasapian, 175–86. Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2000. Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. New York: Penguin Group, 2004. Ferguson, James, and Akhil Gupta. “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.” In Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, 33–51. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. Fetthauer, Sophie. “Kurt Singer.” In Lexikon verfolgter Musiker und Musikerinnen der NSZeit, ed. Claudia Maurer Zenck and Peter Petersen (University of Hamburg). Available from http://www.lexm.unihamburg.de/object/lexm_lexmperson_00001059. Filler, Susan M. “Mahler as a Jew in the Literature.” Shofar 18, no. 4 (Summer 2000): 62–78. Fisher, Philip. Making and Effacing Art: Modern American Art in a Culture of Museums. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. Freeden, Herbert. The Jewish Press in the Third Reich. Trans. William Templer. Providene: Berg, 1993. Freeden, Herbert. “A Jewish Theatre under the Swastika.” Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute 1 (1956): 142–62. Freeden, Herbert. Jüdisches Theater in Nazideutschland. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1964. Friedländer, Saul. Nazi Germany and the Jews. Vol. I, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Frühauf, Tina. The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

sources consulted

227

Gadberry, Glen W. “Nazi Germany’s Jewish Theatre.” Theatre Survey 21, no.1 (May 1980): 15–34. Gärtner, Hans. “Problems of Jewish Schools in Germany during the Hitler Regime.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 1 (1956): 123–41. Gay, Peter. My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Geiger, Friedrich. Musik in zwei Diktaturen. Verfolgung von Komponisten unter Hitler und Stalin. Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 2004. Gelber, Mark H. Melancholy Pride: Nation, Race, and Gender in the German Literature of Cultural Zionism. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000. Gerhard, Anselm. “Musicology in the ‘Third Reich’: A Preliminary Report.” Journal of Musicology 18, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 517–43. Gerhard, Anselm. “Richard Wagner und der Er‹ndung des ‘Jüdischen’ in der Musik.” In Jüdische Musik? Fremdbilder—Eigenbilder, ed. Eckhard John and Heidy Zimmermann. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. Gerigk, Herbert. Giuseppe Verdi. Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1932. Gerigk, Herbert, and Theo Stengel. Lexikon der Juden in der Musik: Mit einem Titelverzeichnis jüdischer Werke. Berlin: Bernhard Hahnefeld Verlag, 1940. Geschlossene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Deutschland 1933–1941. Ed. Akademie der Künste. Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1992. Gianturco, Carolyn. “Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno: Four Case-Studies in Determining Italian Poetic-Musical Genres.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 119, no. 2 (1994): 43–59. Gibbs, Christopher H. The Life of Schubert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Gibbs, Christopher H. “ ‘Poor Schubert’: Images and Legends of the Composer.” In The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs, 36–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Gilbert, Shirli. Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Gilliam, Bryan. “The Annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi Revisionism and the Politics of Appropriation.” Musical Quarterly 78, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 584–604. Gilliam, Bryan. “Stage and Screen: Kurt Weill and Operatic Reform in the 1920s.” In Music and Performance during the Weimar Republic, ed. Bryan Gilliam, 1–12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Gilliam, Bryan. “A Viennese Opera Composer in Hollywood.” In Driven into Paradise, ed. Reinhold Brinkmann and Christoph Wolf, 223–42. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Gilman, Sander L. Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Gilmore, Gregory. “Musical and Cultural Activities inside Terezín, 1941–1945.” Music Research Forum 11, no. 1 (1996): 22–46.

228

sources consulted

Gingerich, John. “‘To how many shameful deeds must you lend your image’: Schubert’s Pattern of Telescoping and Excision in the Texts of His Latin Masses.” Current Musicology 70 (Fall 2000): 61–99. Gleason, Ralph J. “Can the White Man Sing the Blues?” (1968). Quoted in Joel Rudinow, “Race Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 127–37. Goebbels, Joseph. The Goebbels Diaries: 1939–1941. Trans. Fred Taylor. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938. Goebbels, Joseph. Tagebücher 1924–1945, 1: Einfürung 1924–1929. Ed. Ralf Georg Reuth. Munich: Piper, 1999. Goldberg, David J. To the Promised Land: A History of Zionist Thought from Its Origins to the Modern State of Israel. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Goldsmith, Martin. The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000. Goss, Madeleine. Bolero: The Life of Maurice Ravel. New York: Tudor, 1940. Gradenwitz, Peter. The Music of Israel: From the Biblical Era to Modern Times. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1996. Gradenwitz, Peter. The Music of Israel: Its Rise and Growth through 5,000 Years. New York: W. W. Norton, 1949. Gramit, David. “Constructing a Victorian Schubert: Music, Biography, and Cultural Value.” Nineteenth Century Music 92, no. 1 (Summer 1993): 65–78. Green, Gerald. The Artists of Terezín. New York: Schocken Books, 1978. Griffel, L. Michael. “Schubert’s Orchestral Music: ‘Striving after the Highest in Art.’” The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher H. Gibbs, 193–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Gross, Leonard. The Last Jews in Berlin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982. Günter, Siegfried. “Gegenwartsoper.” Quoted and translated in Susan C. Cook, Opera for a New Republic: The Zeitopern of Krenek, Weill, and Hindemith, 22. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988. Guttmann, Oskar. “Jewish Music and Jewish Composers in the Diaspora: I. Germany.” Musica Hebraica 1–2 (1938): 44–46. HaCohen, Ruth. “Between Noise and Harmony: The Oratorical Moment in the Musical Entanglements of Jews and Christians.” Critical Inquiry 32 (Winter 2006): 250–77. HaCohen, Ruth. “Intricate Temporalities: The Trans‹guration of Proper and ‘Improper’ Sounds from Christian to Jewish Environments.” In Given World and Time: Temporalities in Context, ed. Tyrus Miller. Budapest: Central European Press, forthcoming: 81–104. Hall, Stuart. “Introduction: Who Needs Identity.” In Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, 1–17. London: Sage Publications, 1996. Hanau, Eva. “Die musikalischen Aktivitäten des Jüdischen Kulturbunds in Frankfurt am Main.” In Verfemte Musik: Komponisten in den Diktaturen unseres Jahrhunderts, Dokumentation des Kolloquiums vom 9–12 Januar 1993 in Dresden, ed. Joachim Braun, 79–89. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1993.

sources consulted

229

Hanslick, Edward. Die moderne Oper: Kritiken und Studien. Berlin: A. Hofmann, 1875. Hanson, Alice M. Musical Life in Biedermeier Vienna. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Hargreaves, David J. The Developmental Psychology of Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Hasse, Karl. Von Deutschen Meistern: Zur Neugestaltung unseres Musiklebens im neuen Deutschland, vol. 2. Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1934. Hayman, Ronald. Brecht: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Heilbronner, Oded. “From Antisemitic Peripheries to Antisemitic Centres: The Place of Antisemitism in Modern German History.” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 4 (October 2000): 559–79. Heldt, Guido. “Hardly Heroes: Composers as a Subject in National Socialist Cinema.” In Music and Nazism: Art under Tyranny, 1933–1945, ed. Michael H. Kater and Albrecht Riethmüller, 114–35. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2003. Herf, Jeffrey. Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Herzl, Theodor. Der Judenstaat. In Theodor Herzl’s Zionistische Schriften. Erster Teil, ed. Leon Kellner. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, n.d. Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Hill, Melvyn A., ed. Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979. Hilmes, Oliver. Im Fadenkreuz: Politische Gustav-Mahler-Rezeption 1919–1945. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003. Hinkel, Hans. “Die judenreine Theaterpolitik im Deutschen Reich.” Ziel und Weg 21 (1936): 587–88. Hirsch, Foster. Kurt Weill on Stage: From Berlin to Broadway. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Hirsch, Lily E. “Felix Mendelssohn’s Psalm 100 Reconsidered.” Philomusica (2004/2005). Available from http://philomusica.unipv.it/amate/2004-5/saggi/hirsch/index.html. Hirsch, Lily E.“Segregating Sound: Robert Schumann in the Third Reich.” Forthcoming. In Rethinking Schumann, ed. Roe-Min Kok and Laura Tunbridge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Hirschberg, Johoash. “Heinrich Schalit and Paul Ben-Haim in Munich.” Yuval 4 (1982): 131–49. Hobsbawm, Eric J. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Holde, Artur. Jews in Music: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Present. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. Holl, Karl. Verdi. Berlin: Karl Siegismund Verlag, 1939. Hoorickx, Reinhard van. “Schubert and the Bible.” Musical Times 119 (November 1978): 953–55. Idelsohn, A. Z. Jewish Music: In Its Historical Development. New York: Henry Holt, 1924.

230

sources consulted

Idelsohn, A. Z. “My Life: A Sketch.” Yuval 5 (1986): 18–23. Jäckel, Eberhard, and Lea Rosh. “Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland”: Deportation und Ermorderung der Juden, Kollaboration und Verweigerung in Europa. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campte, 1990. Jacobson, Joshua R. “Franz Schubert and the Vienna Synagogue.” Choral Journal 38, no. 1 (August 1997): 9–15. Jelavich, Peter. “Modernity, Civic Identity, and Metropolitan Entertainment: Vaudeville, Cabaret, and Revue in Berlin, 1900–1933.” In Berlin Culture and Metropolis, ed. Charles W. Haxthausen and Heidrun Suhr, 95–110. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. John, Eckhard, and Heidy Zimmermann, eds. Jüdische Musik? Fremdbilder—Eigenbilder. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. “Judenrat or Jewish Council.” Sponsored by the Museum of Tolerance Multimedia Learning Center. Available from http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x11/xr1189.html. Accessed 28 February 2003. Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin Monatsblätter/Monatsblätter des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden. October 1933; November 1933; December 1933; February 1934; May 1935; December 1937; March 1938. Jüdischer Kulturbund Rhein-Ruhr: Mitteilungen. May 1934; June 1934. Kagarlitsky, Boris. The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present. Trans. Brian Pearce. New York: Verso, 1988. Kahn, Eliott. “Heinrich Schalit and Weimar Jewish Music.” Musica Judaica 15 (2000–2001): 33–68. Kaplan, Marian A. “Review: The ‘German-Jewish Symbiosis’ Revisited.” New German Critique 70 (Winter 1997): 183–90. Karas, Joza. Music in Terezín, 1941–1945. New York: Beaufort Books, 1985. Kater, Michael H. Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Kater, Michael H. Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Kater, Michael H. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler, 1936–45: Nemesis. New York: Penguin Group, 2000. Kimber, Marian Wilson. “The Composer as Other: Gender and Race in the Biography of Felix Mendelssohn.” In The Mendelssohns: Their Music in History, ed. John Michael Cooper and Julie D. Prandi, 335–51. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Kivy, Peter. Authenticities: Philosophical Re›ections on Musical Performance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Klemperer, Victor. I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–1941. Trans. Martin Chalmers. New York: Modern Library, 1998. Köhler, Joachim. Wagner’s Hitler: The Prophet and His Disciple. Trans. Ronald Taylor. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

sources consulted

231

Koonz, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000. Kötzch, Helmut. Article in series of “Bekenntnisse zur neuen deutschen Musik” (1933). Quoted in Jürgen Schebera, Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life, trans. Caroline Murphy, 204. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Kowalke, Kim. Kurt Weill in Europe. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1979. Kramer, Lawrence. Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. Kravitt, Edward F. The Lied: Mirror of Late Romanticism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Kreuzer, Gundula. “Zurück zu Verdi: The ‘Verdi Renaissance’ and Musical Culture in the Weimar Republic.” Studi Verdiani 13 (1998): 117–54. Kushner, David Z. The Ernest Bloch Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Kushner, David Z. “The ‘Jewish’ Works of Ernest Bloch.” Journal of Musicological Research (1981): 259–73. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. LaCapra, Dominick. History, Theory, Trauma: Representing the Holocaust. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Landau, Anneliese. “Arnold Schönberg Zum 60 Geburtstag.” Der Morgen (September 1934): 320. Landau, Anneliese. The Contribution of Jewish Composers to the Music of the Modern World. Cincinnatti: National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, 1946. Landau, Anneliese. “Jewish Music and Jewish Composers in the Diaspora: I. Germany: Jacob Schoenberg.” Musica Hebraica 1–2 (1938): 43–44. Landau, Anneliese. “Zwei Gedenktage. Zu Mendelssohn-Bartholdys 125. Geburtstag.” Der Morgen (February 1934): 478–79. Landau, Ludwig. “Das jüdische Element bei Gustav Mahler (Zum 25. Todestage—18. Mai 1936).” Der Morgen (May 1936): 67–73. Lang, Paul Henry. Editorial (October 1959). Musical Quarterly 75, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 74–80. Lea, Henry A. Gustav Mahler: Man on the Margin. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1985. Levi, Erik. “Music and National Socialism: The Politicization of Criticism.” In The Nazi‹cation of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture, and Film in the Third Reich, ed. Brandon Taylor and Wilfried von der Will, 158–82. Hampshire: Winchester Press, 1990. Levi, Erik. Music in the Third Reich. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Levine, Herbert S. “A Jewish Collaborator in Nazi Germany: The Strange Career of Georg Kareski, 1933–37.” Central European History 8, no. 3 (September 1975): 251–81. Levinson, Jerold. “Music and Negative Emotion.” In Music and Meaning, ed. Jenefer Robinson, 215–41. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Levinson, Jerold. Music in the Moment. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Limberg, Margaret, and Hubert Rübsaat, eds. Germans No More: Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933–1938. Trans. Alan Nothnagle. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006.

232

sources consulted

Locke, Ralph P. “On Music and Orientalism.” In Music, Culture, and Society, ed. Derek B. Scott, 102–9. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. “The Lord Is Our Shepherd.” Available from http://www.bible.org/page.asp? page_id=1965. Accessed 11 August 2006. Lovisa, Fabian R. Musikkritik im Nationalismus. Die Rolle deutschprachiger Musikzeitschriften 1920–1945. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1993. Lühe, Barbara von der. “Konzerte der Selbstbehauptung: Die Orchester des Jüdischen Kulturbundes 1933–1941.” Das Orchester 44 (1996): 2–10. Mahler, Alma. Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler/Alma Mahler-Werfel, Briefe an Alma Mahler/Gustav Mahler. Ed. Donald Mitchell. Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1971. Mandell, Eric. “Salomon Sulzer, 1804–90.” In The Jews of Austria: Essays on Their Life, History and Destruction, ed. Joseph Fraenkel, 221–29. London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1967. Marrus, Michael R. The Politics of Assimilation: A Study of the French Jewish Community at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Martin, Joachim. “Felix Mendelssohn und das ‘Dritte Reich’. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Rezeption der Musik und der Persönlichkeit Felix Mendelssohns.” In Felix Mendelssohn—Mitwelt und Nachwelt, ed. Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, 64–70. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1996. Matthews, David. “Berthold Goldschmidt: A Biographical Sketch.” Tempo 144 (March 1983): 2–6. McGeary, Thomas. “Music, Meaning, and Politics: The 1784 Handel Commemoration Reconsidered.” Göttinge Händel-Beiträge (2002): 205–17. McIsaac, Peter. Museums of the Mind: German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Mensch, Peter van. “Methodological Museology; or, Towards a Theory of Museum Practice.” In Objects of Knowledge, ed. Susan Pearce, 141–57. London: Athlone Press, 1990. Messing, Scott. Schubert in the European Imagination. Vol. I, The Romantic and Victorian Eras. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006. Metzger, Christoph. Mahler-Rezeption: Perspektiven der Rezeption Gustav Mahlers. Wilhelmshaven, Germany: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 2000. Meyer, Michael. The Politics of Music in the Third Reich. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. Miller, Malcolm. “Salomon Sulzer: A Centenary Observed.” Musical Times 132, no. 1775 (January 1991): 730. Móricz, Klára. “The Con‹nes of Judaism and the Illusiveness of Universality in Ernest Bloch’s Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service).” Repercussions 4, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Fall 1996): 184–241. Móricz, Klára. Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Morold, Max. “Die deutsche Tonkunst in Österreich.” In Ruhmeshalle deutscher Arbeit in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie, ed. Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anhalt, 1916. Moser, Hans-Joachim. “Giuseppe Verdi.” Deutsche Musikkultur 3 (1938–39): 373.

sources consulted

233

Moser, Hans-Joachim. Kleine deutsche Musikgeschichte. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1938. Mosse, George L. Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. Müller-Wesemann, Barbara. Theater als geistiger Widerstand: Der Jüdische Kulturbund im Hamburg 1934–1941. Stuttgart: M und P Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1996. Müntzenberger, Isabelle. “Händel-Renaissance(n): Aspekte der Händel-Rezeption der 1920er Jahre und der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus.” Musik-Konzepte (January 2006): 67–86. Mursell, James L. The Psychology of Music. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1964. Nadel, Arno. “Jüdische Musik.” Der Jude (1923): 227–36. “Nationalism.” The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Ed. Don Michael Randel, 527. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986. “Nationalism.” The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Ed. Don Michael Randel, 548–49. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. Nettl, Paul. “Judaism and Music.” In The Hebrew Impact on Western Civilization, ed. Dagobert D. Runes, 363–404. New York: Philosophical Library, 195. Newbould, Brian. Schubert: The Music and the Man. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. Nicosia, Francis R. The Third Reich and the Palestine Question. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2000. Niewyk, Donald L. The Jews in Weimar Germany. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. O’Brien, Mary-Elizabeth. “The Celluloid War: Packaging War for Sale in Nazi HomeFront Films.” In Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, ed. Richard A. Etlin, 158–80. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Olin, Margaret. The Nation Without Art: Examining Modern Discourses on Jewish Art. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Osborne, Charles. The Complete Operas of Verdi. London: Victor Gollancz, 1969. Padgett, Alan G. “Dialectical Realism in Theology and Science.” Perspective on Science and Christian Faith 54 (2002): 184–192. Available from http://www.luthersem.edu/ apadgett/dialectic.htm. Accessed 8 January 2008. Painter, Karen. “Jewish Identity and Anti-Semitic Critique in the Austro-German Reception of Mahler, 1900–1945.” In Perspectives on Gustav Mahler, 175–93. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Painter, Karen. Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900–1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Parker, Roger. “Arpa d’or dei fatidici vati”: The Verdia Patriotic Chorus in the 1840s. Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1997. Pederson, Sanna. “On the Task of the Music Historian: The Myth of the Symphony after Beethoven.” Repercussions 2, no. 2 (Fall 1993): 5–30. Petrobelli, Pierluigi. Music in the Theater: Essays on Verdi and Other Composers. Translations by Roger Parger. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

234

sources consulted

Peukert, Detlev. Inside Nazi Germany. Trans. Richard Deverson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity. Trans. Richard Deveson. London: Penguin Press, 1991. Pfau, Thomas. “From Mediation to Medium: Aesthetic and Anthropological Dimensions of the Image (Bild) and the Crisis of Bildung in German Modernism.” Modernist Cultures 1, no. 2 (Winter 2005): 141–80. Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane. “Verdi’s Life: A Thematic Biography.” In The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, ed. Scott L. Balthazar, 3–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. “Polemic about the Premiere of the Jewish Kulturbund.” Available from http://www.his tory-of-the-holocaust.org/LIBARC/ARCHIVE/Chapters/Shock/Cultural/Polemic .html. Accessed 8 March 2006. Poppel, Stephen M. Zionism in Germany, 1897–1933: The Shaping of Jewish Identity. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1977. Potter, Pamela M. “The Concept of Race in German Musical Discourse.” In Western Music and Race, ed. Julie Brown, 49–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Potter, Pamela M. Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Potter, Pamela M. “The Politicization of Handel and His Oratorios in the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Early Years of the German Democratic Republic.” Musical Quarterly 85, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 311–41. Potter, Pamela M. “What Is ‘Nazi Music’?” Musical Quarterly 88, no. 3 (2005): 428–55. Prawy, Marcel. “Nun sei bedankt . . .”: Mein Richard-Wagner-Buch. Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1982. Prieberg, Fred K. Musik im NS-Staat. Frankfurt: Fischer TaschenbuchVerlag, 1982. Rao, Pratima V., and Bruce Ziff. Introduction to Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, ed. Bruce Ziff and Pratima V. Rao, 1–30. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997. Raskin, Adolf. “Verdi and Aïda. Thema con variationi.” Der Scheinwerfer 5, no. 16 (1932). Quoted and translated in Gundula Kreuzer, “Verdi and German Culture, 1871–1945,” 184. PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, 2004. Reed, John. Schubert. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997. Reed, John. The Schubert Song Companion. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985. Reichsbahnzentrale fuer den Deutschen Reiseverkehr. Germany, the Land of Music. Berlin: Reichsbahnzentrale fuer den Deutschen Reiseverkehr, 1938. Reichsverband der jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland, ed. Pult und Bühne: Ein Almanach. Berlin: Joachim Goldstein Jüdischer Buchverlag, 1938. Reichsverband der Juedischen Kulturbuende in Deutschland, Mitteilungen. March 1938; May 1938. Richarz, Monika, ed. Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries. Trans. Stella P. Rosenfeld and Sidney Rosenfeld. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

sources consulted

235

Riethmüller, Albrecht. Die Walhalla und ihre Musiker. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1993. Ringer, Alexander L. Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Ringer, Alexander L. “Handel and the Jews.” Music and Letters 42, no. 1 (January 1961): 17–29. Rings, Werner. Life with the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler’s Europe, 1939–1945. Trans. J. Maxwell Brownjohn. New York: Doubleday, 1982. Riz, Elisabeth. “Robert Hirschfeld. Leben-Wirken-Bedeutung.” In Biographische Beiträge zum Musikleben Wiens im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Friedrich C. Heller, 1–79. Vienna: Verbander Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften Österreichs, 1992. Rogge-Gau, Sylvia. Die doppelte Wurzel des Daseins: Julius Bab und der Jüdische Kulturbund Berlin. Berlin: Metropol, 1999. Roseman, Mark. The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002. Rosenberg, Alfred. Gestaltung der Idee. Munich: Verlag Eher, 1936. Roters, Katja. Bearbeitungen von Händel-Oratorien im Dritten Reich. Halle: Händel Haus, 1999. Rothmüller, Aron Marko. The Music of the Jews: An Historical Appreciation. New York: Beechhurst Press, 1954. Rovit, Rebecca. “An Artistic Mission in Nazi Berlin: The Jewish Kulturbund Theater as Sanctuary.” In Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs, ed. Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb, 28–39. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Rudinow, Joel. “Race Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 127–37. Rupnow, Dirk. “‘Ihr müßt sein, auch wenn ihr nicht mehr seid’: The Jewish Central Museum in Prague and Historical Memory in the Third Reich.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 16, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 23–53. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. Salomon, Charlotte. Charlotte: Life or Theater? An Autobiographical Play. Trans. Leila Vennewitz. New York: Viking Press, 1981. Saminsky, Lazare. “Hebrew Song Lives in Modern Music.” Musical America 41, no. 4 (14 November 1924): 9. Saminsky, Lazare. Music of the Ghetto and the Bible. New York: Bloch, 1934. Sandbach, R. G. E., and K. H. Strange. Psalm Twenty-Three: An Anthology. Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1969. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Anti-Semite and Jew. Trans. George J. Becker. New York: Schocken Books, 1948. Schebera, Jürgen. Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life. Trans. Caroline Murphy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Schiedermair, Ludwig. “Zu Beethovens Schicksalsidee.” In Von Deutscher Tonkunst: Festschrift zu Peter Raabes 70. Geburtstag, ed. Alfred Morgenroth, 69–77. Leipzig: C. F. Peters, 1942.

236

sources consulted

Schiller, David M. Bloch, Schoenberg, and Bernstein: Assimilating Jewish Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Schmidt, Esther. “Nationalism and the Creation of Jewish Music: The Politicization of Music and Language in the German-Jewish Press Prior to the Second World War.” Musica Judaica 15 (2000–2001): 1–32. Schmidt, Gilya Gerda. The Art and Artists of the Fifth Zionist Congress, 1901: Heralds of a New Age. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg. Ed. Leonard Stein. Trans. Leo Black. London: Faber and Faber, 1975. Schorske, Carl E. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage Books, 1981. Schubert, Franz. Franz Schubert’s Letters and Other Writings. Ed. Otto Erich Deutsch and trans. Venetia Savile. New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1928. Schulte-Sasse, Linda. “Retrieving the City as Heimat: Berlin in Nazi Cinema.” In Berlin Culture and Metropolis, ed. Charles W. Haxthausen and Heidrun Suhr, 166–86. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. Segal, Eliezer. “Getting a Handel on Hanukkah.” Available from http://www.acs.ucal gary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/981210_HandelHanukkah.html. Accessed 29 May 2008. Severtson, Kirk. “In the Spirit of the People: Mahler’s Settings of Folk Poetry from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” Music Research Forum 14 (1999): 1–26. Sharp, Cecil J. English Folk Song: Some Conclusions. London: Methuen, 1954. First written in 1907. Shawn, Allen. Arnold Schoenberg: Journey. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002. Shelemay, Kay Kaufmann. “Mythologies and Realities in the Study of Jewish Music.” In The World of Music 37 (1995): 24–38. Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Boston: Mariner Book, 2004. Simon, Artur, ed. Das Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv 1900–2000: Sammlungen der traditionallen Musik der Welt. Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 2000. Smart, Mary Ann. “Verdi, Italian Romanticism, and the Risorgimento.” In The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, ed. Scott L. Balthazar, 29–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Smith, Ruth. Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Smith, Ruth. “The Meaning of Morell’s Libretto of ‘Judas Maccabaeus.” Music and Letters 79, no. 1 (February 1998): 50–71. Smither, Howard E. A History of the Oratorio, vol. 1. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Smither, Howard E. A History of the Oratorio, vol. 4. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Smoley, Lewis M. “Mahler Conducted and Recorded: From the Concert Hall to DVD.” In The Cambridge Companion to Mahler, ed. Jeremy Barham, 243–61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

sources consulted

237

Solvik, Morten. “Mahler and Germany.” In The Mahler Companion, ed. Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson, 126–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Solvik, Morten. “Mahler’s Untimely Modernism.” In Perspectives on Gustav Mahler, 153–74. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Sonner, Rudolph. “Kultur—Rasse—Musik.” Die Musik (March 1936): 406–7. Sponheuer, Bernd. “Musik auf einer ‘kulturellen und physischen Insel’: Musik als Überlebensmittel im Jüdischen Kulturbund 1933–1941.” In Musik in der Emigration 1933–1945. Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Rückwirkung, ed. Horst Weber, 108–32. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1993. Sposato, Jeffrey S. “Creative Writing: The [Self-] Identi‹cation of Mendelssohn as Jew.” Musical Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 190–209. Sposato, Jeffrey S. The Price of Assimilation: Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Stanley, Glenn. “Schubert’s Religious and Choral Music: Toward a Statement of Faith.” In The Cambridge Companion to Schubert, ed. Christopher Gibbs, 207–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Steinberg, Michael P. “Reading Charlotte Salomon.” In Reading Charlotte Salomon, ed. Michael P. Steinberg and Monica Bohm-Duchen, 1–20. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Steinweis, Alan E. Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Steinweis, Alan E. “Hans Hinkel and German Jewry, 1933–1941.” In Theatrical Performance during the Holocaust: Texts, Documents, Memoirs, ed. Rebecca Rovit and Alvin Goldfarb, 15–27. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Steinweis, Alan E. “Weimar Culture and the Rise of National Socialism: The Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur.” Central European History (1991): 402–23. Stern, Fritz. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1961. Stern, Guy. “The Road to The Eternal Road.” In A New Orpheus: Essays on Kurt Weill, ed. Kim H. Kowalke, 269–84. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Stillmark, Alexander. “‘Es war alles gut und refüllt.’ Rudolf Hans Bartsch’s Schwammerl and the Making of the Schubert Myth.” In The Biedermeier and Beyond, ed. Ian F. Roe, 225–34. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Stockmann, Erich. “Ethnomusicology in Berlin: Aspects and Perspectives.” In European Studies in Ethnomusicology: Historical Developments and Recent Trends, ed. Max Peter Baumann, Artur Simon, and Ulrich Wegner, 13–25. Wilhelmshaven: Florian Noetzel Verlag, 1992. Stompor, Stephen. Jüdisches Musik- und Theaterleben unter dem NS-Staat. Hannover: Europäisches Zentrum für Jüdische Musik, 2001. Storr, Anthony. Music and the Mind. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.

238

sources consulted

Strom, Yale. The Book of Klezmer: The History, the Music, the Folklore. Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2002. Struck, Michael. Robert Schumann: Violinkonzer D-moll (WoO23). Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1988. Stühr, Wolfgang. “Ahasverus, Zum Leben Verurteilt: Der Ewige Jude, der ›iegende Holländer, der Fahrende Geselle.” In Mythen in der Musik: Essays zu den Internationalen Musikfestwochen Luzern, 70–87. Lucerne: Sticher Printing AG, 1999. Stutman, Suzanne, ed. My Other Loneliness: Letters of Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Suval, Stanley. The Anschluss Question in the Weimar Era: A Study of Nationalism in Germany and Austria, 1918–1933. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Swett, Pamela E. Neighbors and Enemies: The Culture of Radicalism in Berlin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Tabak, Israel. Judaic Lore in Heine: The Heritage of a Poet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1948. Taruskin, Richard. “Nationalism.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 16, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 689–706. London: Macmillan, 2001. Taruskin, Richard. The Oxford History of Western Music. Vol. 2, The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Taruskin, Richard. The Oxford History of Western Music. Vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Taylor, Ronald. Furtwängler on Music: Essays and Addresses. Ed. and trans. Ronald Taylor. Aldershot, England: Scholar Press, 1991. Todd, R. Larry. Mendelssohn: A Life in Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Todd, R. Larry. “Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy), (Jacob Ludwig) Felix.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 16, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 389–424. London: Macmillan, 2001. Trilling, Lionel. Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. Trunk, Isaiah. Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Vaughan-Williams, Ralph. National Music. London: Oxford University Press, 1935. Vetter, Walther. “Ein politische Beethoven-Betrachtung.” In Festschrift Arnold Schering zum sechzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Helmuth Osthoff, Walter Serauky, and Adam Adrio, 241–49. Berlin: A. Gas, 1937. Viereck, Peter. Metapolitics: From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2004. Wagner, Manfred. “Einführung und Analyse.” In Mozart Sinfonie C-Dur: KV 551 “Jupitersinfonie,” 91–142. Mainz: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1979. Wagner, Richard. “Judaism in Music.” In Richard Wagner’s Prose Works: The Theater, vol. 3, trans. William Ashton Ellis, 75–122. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894. Walter, Bruno. Gustav Mahler. Trans. James Galston. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1937. Wangemann, Otto. Geschichte des Oratoriums (1882). Quoted and translated in Howard

sources consulted

239

E. Smither, A History of the Oratorio, vol. 4, 13. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Wassermann, Jakob. Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude. Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag, 1921. Weber, Max. The Rational and Social Foundations of Music. Ed. and trans. Don Martindale, Johannes Riedel, and Gertrude Neuwirth. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1958. Weill, Kurt. “Notiz zum Jazz.” Anbruch 11 (March 1929): 138. Weill, Kurt.“Zur großen Form” (August 1931). Quoted in Jürgen Schebera, Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life, trans. Caroline Murphy, 183. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Weinbrenner, Hans-Joachim, ed. Handbuch des Deutschen Rundfunks 1939–40. Quoted in Horst J. P. Bergmeier and Rainer E. Lotz, Hitler’s Airwaves: The Inside Story of Nazi Radio Broadcasting and Propaganda Swing, 7. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Weininger, Otto. Sex and Character. Authorized translation from the 6th edition. London: William Heinemann, [1906]. Weisgal, Meyer. . . . So Far: An Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1971. Weissmann, Adolf. Die Musik in der Weltkrise. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1922. Weissmann, Adolf. Verdi. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1922. Weitz, Eric. D. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Welter, Friedrich. Musikgeschichte im Umriss. Leipzig: Hachmeister und Thal, 1939. Weltsch, Robert. “Introduction.” Year Book of the Leo Baeck Institute 1 (1956): xix–xxxi. Wilhelm Furtängler: Die Programme der Konzerte mit dem Berliner Philharmonischen Orchester 1922–1954. Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1958. Williams, Maurice. “German Imperialism and Austria, 1938.” Journal of Contemporary History 14 (1979): 139–53. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value. Trans. Peter Winch. Ed. G. H. Von Wright. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Wulf, Joseph. Musik im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation. [Reinbek b. Hamburg]: Rowohlt, 1966. Wulf, Joseph. Presse und Funk im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation. Vienna: Ullstein, 1983. Yahya, Faris. Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany. Beirut: Palestine Research Center, 1978. Young, Percy M. The Oratorios of Handel. New York: Roy Publishers, 1950. Zortman, Bruce H. “Theatre in Isolation: The Jüdischer Kulturbund of Nazi Germany.” Educational Theatre Journal 24, no. 2 (May 1972): 159–68.

Index

“About Jewish Music” (Schoenberg, J.), 64 Academy of Fine Arts, 194n105 Adler, Hugo, 8, 65, 114f Adler, Karl, 48, 51–52, 78 Adler, Victor, 138 Administration of Free Time Activities, 28 Adorno, Theodor, 33, 72, 103, 167–68n82, 183–84n127 Akademie der Künste, 157 Albéniz, Isaac, 66 alienation, 69 America (Bloch), 78, 183n125 Amsterdam Mahler Festival, 207n66 Anderson, Benedict, 58 “An die ferne geliebte” (Beethoven), 101 Anselm-Herzog, Ruth, 22 anti-Jewish fraternities, 7 anti-Jewish laws, 35. See also April Civil Service Laws; Nuremberg Laws anti-Semitism in German art and music, 33 internalization of, 50 in 1920s, 2–3, 8–9 Wagner and, 49, 167n79 Zionism as response to, 38 April Civil Service Laws, 25, 26, 35 Arányi, Juliette, 209n98 arbitration committee of League, 43 Arendt, Hannah, 15, 38, 87, 152 Arnim, Achim von, 138 Arnstein, Fanny, 88 artistic policies, Hitler’s vs. Stalin’s, 180n59 Aryan composer, censorship of, 196n10 assimilation of Jews in German culture, 6–9, 21, 30, 37–39, 87, 120, 184n135 Association of Immigrants from Central Europe, 152

Association of Jewish Culture Leagues, 24, 45–46 audience expectations, 43–44 Aufsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Brecht and Weill), 69 Augustus, William, 114 Austria, 103–5 authenticity Bloch and, 84, 86 folk music and, 77 in German art, 32–33 nationalism as a condition of, 73 Schoenberg and, 74–75 signi‹ers of, 82–83 Avodas Hakodesh (Bloch), 79–83, 114f Baal Shem (Bloch), 75, 77 Bab, Julius, 12, 17, 38, 43, 67 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 30, 32, 63f, 109 Bach-Jahrbuch, 16 Back, Gilbert, 160n18 Badisches Landestheater, 18 Baeck, Leo, 12 Balak and Bilam (Adler, H.), 114f Baldassare, Antonio, 98–99 Barnowsky, Victor, 1 Bartók, Béla, 48, 64 Bartsch, Rudolf Hans, 97–98 Baum, Oskar, 139 Baumann, Kurt formation of League and, 9–10, 12–13 and Hamlet, 69–70 on Kristallnacht, 150 and League repetoire, 29 on Nazi regime’s repertoire policy, 68 on Nazi regime’s support of the League, 27 unpublished plan for League, 162n56

241

242 Bayreuth Festival, 8–9 Bechstein Hall, 97 Beckerman, Michael B., 83 Beer, Amalie, 88 Beethoven, Ludwig van “An die ferne geliebte,” 101 censorship, 30, 101 Egmont Overture, 25 Eroica Symphony, 38 Fidelio, 101 in›uence of, 192n88 League performances of, 63f “Ninth Symphony,” 102 “Pathétique Sonata,” 102 as representative of German supremacy, 101–2 sacred music of, 97 Schubert and, 98, 102–3 “Third Symphony,” 102 Behrend, Hans, 197n33 Beiträge zur Geschichte des Oratoriums (Bitter), 112 Bellman, Jonathan, 99 Belshazzar (Handel), 113, 114f Benjamin, Walter, 61–62 Benya, Masha, 37, 50 Benz, Richard, 105 Berg, Alban, 28 Berl, Heinrich, 81 Berlin, 2, 9–10 Berlin, Isaiah, 123, 126 Berlin Doctors’ Chorus, 10, 113 “Berliner Aerztechor,” 10, 113 Berliner Requiem, Das (Weill), 71 Berliner Tageblatt, 16 Berliner Theater, 19, 20f, 22 Berlin Jewish Museum, 2 Berlin Jewish Volkshochschule, 2 Berlin Philharmonic, 4, 160n18 Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, 64 Berlin salons, 88 Berlin School of Comparative Musicology, 64 Berlin Staatsoper, 31 Berlin Theater, 44, 53 Bernauer, Rudolf, 19 Bernd, Bert, 14 Bernstein, Leonard, 142, 144 Berté, Heinrich, 98, 105 Berufskrankheiten der Musiker (Singer), 10 Betrachtung, 137 Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, 42, 171n32

index Bible, 198n46. See also New Testament themes; Old Testament themes Bie, Oscar, 98 Bildung, 7 Binder, A. W., 93 Birnbaum, Eduard, 95, 189n44 Bitter, Carl Hermann, 112 Blessinger, Karl, 32–33, 132–33, 167n75, 192n85 Bloch, Ernest America, 78, 183n125 authenticity, 84, 86 Avodas Hakodesh, 79–83, 114f Baal Shem, 75, 77 as composer of Jewish music, 78 on creation of League, 83–84 criticism of, 183n125 “Festival of Rejoicing in the Law,” 77 folk music and, 77–78 four-note motive, 185n145 on Hebrew language, 80 “Herbstgedicht,” 75 inner voice as Jewish essence, 78–79 Israel Symphony, 75 Jewish characteristics in music of, 185n146, 185n147 Landau on, 53, 75–76 “Landschaftsbilder,” 75 League performances of, 75, 76f, 79–83 and League repertoire, 67 Nadel on, 76, 182n107 Nathan on, 50 as national and universal, 83 “Pictures of Chassidic Life,” 77 Psalm 22, 75 Psalm 114, 75 reception of, 73, 139 religious character of work, 184n133 representative of authentic Jewish music, 76 Sacred Service, 79–83, 82–85f Schelomo, 75 on Schoenberg, 74–75 “Simchas Torah,” 77 Singer on, 61 Stengel and Gerigk on, 79 Stutschewsky on, 51 summary of music, 84, 86 Trois Poèmes Juifs, 75 Blood and Soil, 33, 173n80 blues music, 34 Blut und Boden, 33, 173n80

index Boetticher, Wolfgang, 91 Bohlman, Philip, 156 Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky), 66 Borodin, Alexander, 66 Bossi, Enrico, 114f Botstein, Leon, 135, 139 Brahms, Johannes, 30, 63f, 133 Brandmann, Israel, 120 Brandt, Martin, 150, 155 Brecht, Bertolt, 69, 72, 179n46 Brentano, Clemens, 138 Breslau, 24 Brod, Max, 138–39, 206n57 Brodnitz, Friedrich, 39, 75, 170n13 Bruch, Max, 35 Bruckner, Anton, 10, 30, 102, 103–5, 123 Brundibar (Krasa), 35 Buber, Martin, 8, 41, 170n18 Büchenbucher, Hans, 209n98 Burnham, Scott, 103 Burschenschaften, 7 Burte, Hermann, 111 Busch, Fritz, 93–95 cantus ‹rmus motive, 81 censorship. See also repertoire of Jewish Culture League of Aryan composers, 196n10 Bach and, 30 Beethoven and, 30, 101 Brahms and, 30 Bruckner and, 30 challenges to, 111 Handel and, 30, 108–9, 113 Hinkel and, 29–32, 70, 87, 101, 106, 109 home concerts as a loophole in, 89 inconsistency of, 168n96, 192n86 of Jewish music beyond League, 35–36 of League repertoire, 29–32, 68–70 Mahler and, 4, 31, 176n3 Mendelssohn and, 4, 131 Mozart and, 30, 109, 196n10 Nabucco and, 179n55 Schubert and, 30, 101 and Soviet Union, 70 Verdi and, 124 Wagner and, 29–30 Chajes, Julius, 65, 120 Chaluzim, Die (Weinberg), 66 Charade: Gesellschaftsspiel der Schubertianer in Atzenbrugg (Kupelwieser), 99

243 Charlotte: Life or Theater? (Salomon), 13 choral genre, 112, 128 city beauti‹cation, 28 Cohn, Benno, 47, 48 collaboration with Nazi regime, debate over, 14, 149, 152–55 collective punishment, 152–53 Cologne League, 24, 25 Combat League for German Culture, 12, 28 communal singing, 112 communism, 69, 72. See also Volk community, 112–13. See also Volk composers, ban on music of. See censorship concentration camps, 28, 163n8. See also speci‹c camps concert department of League, 17–18 “Concerto Grosso in D major” (Handel), 113 Condell, Heinz, 17, 126 con‹scation of record collections, 145, 210n103 Congregation Emanu-El, 93 context, importance of, 175–76n137, 177n11 Cosí fan Tutte (Mozart), 109 Council of Elders, 152 Council of Jewish Women, 158 Craftsman, 108 criticism, 137 cultural appropriation, 34 Cultural Zionism, 39, 187n12 culture, as property possessed by nation, 34 “Culture Conference of the Association of Jewish Culture Leagues in Germany, The.” See Jewish Culture League Conference Culture League of German Jews, 5, 44. See also Jewish Culture League Culture League of German Jews Rhine-Main, 24 Czech national music, 66 Dahlhaus, Carl, 82, 103, 183n125 “Dankgebet” (Haydn), 21 Davidsohn, Magnus, 206–7n63 décor and costume division of League, 17 “Dee Mezinke Oisgegayben” (Yiddish wedding song), 77 Degenerate Art, 28 Degenerate Music, 28 “Dem Unendlichen” (Schubert), 97 Derrida, Jacques, 210n110 Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Arnim and Brentano), 138

244 Dessau, Paul, 4 Destruction of the European Jews, The (Hilberg), 156 Deutsche Funkausstellung, 71 Deutsche Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 16 discrimination, increase of in 1930s, 55–56 DNVP (German National People’s Party), 3 Döblin, Alfred, 1 Downes, Olin, 78, 183n125 drama department of League, 17 dramaturgy department of League, 17 Dreigroschenoper (Weill), 68 Dreimäderlhaus, Das (Berté), 98, 105 Drei Mäderl um Schubert, 105 Dvor &ák, Antonín, 63f, 66, 78–79 DVP (German People’s Party), 3 Eastern European Jewish music, attitudes toward, 49–50 Edelmann, Bernd, 195n5 Egk, Werner, 134 Egmont Overture (Beethoven), 25 Eichenauer, Richard, 102, 110 Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt), 152 Eighth Symphony (Mahler), 138 Eine Freitagabend-Liturgie (Schalit), 65, 114f Ein Maskenball (Verdi), 125 Einstein, Albert, 69, 179n43 Einstein, Alfred, 16 Eisler, Hanns, 4, 28, 70 Eisner, Hermann, 43 Elijah (Mendelssohn), 35, 114f, 132, 135–36, 204n25 Elkus, Albert, 74 Eloesser, Arthur, 17, 134 emancipation, Jewish, 1 emigration, 4–5, 25–26, 45, 89, 155–56 Emperor Franz I, 89 employees of League hiring, 19, 21 measure of protection offered to, 150, 152, 213n37 prohibition of political discussions, 23–24 wages of, 19 employment, League as a source of, 29 Engel, Friedrich, 72 Engel, Joel, 53, 66, 120 Engel, Julius. See Engel, Joel English audience, Handel and, 109–10 English Folk Song (Sharp), 48

index enjoyment, and familiarity, relationship between, 186n2 Entartete Kunst, 28 Entartete Musik, 28 Eppstein, Dr., 147 Eretz Israel, 40 Eroica Symphony (Beethoven), 38 Eternal Road, The (Weill and Werfel), 67–68, 72 ethnic nationalism of Nazi regime, 27 Ettinger, Max, 65, 114f, 120 Eugen Onegin (Tschaikovsky), 66 evenings of fellowship, 28 ewigen Meister, Die (Benz), 105 familiarity, and enjoyment, relationship between, 186n2 Feierliches Vorspiel (Seelig-Bass), 65 Feldherr, Der (Stephani), 111 femininity in Schubert’s music, 102–5 feminized Jew, idea of, 193n100 “Festival of Rejoicing in the Law” (Bloch), 77 Fest-Oratorium (Handel), 111 Feuermann, Emanuel, 2 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 7 Fidelio (Beethoven), 101 Fifth Zionist Congress, 41 ‹lm composers, Jewish, 167–68n82 ‹lms, made by Nazi regime, 194n116 1st String Quartet in D minor (Schoenberg), 73 First Symphony (Mahler), 140, 207n64 First Zionist Congress, 40 Fischer, Karel, 35 Fischer, Käte, 192n86 Fisher, Philip, 62 folklore, 180n57 folk music. See also Society for Jewish Folk Music authenticity and, 77 as authentic national music, 48–49, 64 as basis for new compositions, 65 Bloch’s use of, 77–78 collecting, 64–65 Israeli national anthem and, 178n30 in Jewish liturgy, 177n20 Mahler and, 138 performance and preservation of, 173n80 publication of, 159n9 Singer on, 53 in Yiddish, 205n50

index forza del destino, La (Verdi), 124, 200–201n88 four-note motive, 185n145 Frankfurter, David, 46, 172n64 Frankfurt League, 24, 207n64 Frankfurt School, 33 “Franz Schubert as a Composer of Synagogue Music” (Birnbaum), 95 Frau ohne Schatten, Die (Strauss), 125 Freeden, Herbert, 11, 44, 46, 47, 109, 155–57 Freiheitsoratorium (Wollong), 111 Freitag-Abend-Liturgie (Kopf), 114f Freitagabend-Liturgie (Weinberg), 114f Freizeitgestaltung, 28 Freunde des Theaters und der Musik, e.V., 24 Freyer, Kurt, 41 Freyhan, H., 125, 126 Friends of Theater and Music, Inc., 24 “From the New World” (Dvoák), 78 Fuchs, Richard, 65 “Fundamentals of Broadcasting” (Weinbrenner), 71 Funk, Walter, 4 Gans, Eduard, 7 Gay, Peter, 37 “Gebet” (Schubert), 21 “Gefror’ne Thränen” (Schubert), 99 Geiger-Kullmann, Rosy, 97 gendered reading of Schubert’s music, 102–5 Gerigk, Herbert Guiseppe Verdi, 124–25 Lexikon der Juden in der Musik, 79, 133, 145, 206n57 on Weill, 72 German Academy of Arts, 2 German art song, 87, 90 German Cultural Zionists, 39, 42, 53, 204n31, 206n56 German culture authenticity, 32–33 Jewish embrace of, 6–9, 21, 30, 37–39, 87, 120, 184n135 Jewish in›uence on, 34–35 Mahler’s identi‹cation with, 135–38 puri‹cation of, 30–31, 36, 87 German Democratic Republic, 4 German Jews cultural life in 1920s, 1–2 dual identity as Germans and Jews, 1, 7–8, 22, 37–38, 90 in›uence on German culture, 34–35

245 Nazi regime’s objection to term, 31 views of League, 55–56 German language, 87–88, 90, 188n31 German music. See also Lieder genre; Schubert, Franz; Schumann, Robert anti-Semitism in, 33 art song, 90 corrupted by Jews according to Nazi regime, 32–34 home concerts, 88–89 as link to German culture for German Jews, 87 protection of, 35–36 German national identity, Jewish challenge to, 7–8 German National People’s Party (DNVP), 3 German People’s Party (DVP), 3 German radio show, 71 German supremacy, 101–2 German Zionists, 38–39, 47, 170n18, 170n27 “Geschäftsordnung für die Leitung des Kulturbundes Deutscher Juden,” 165n36 Geschichte des Oratoriums (Wangemann), 112 Geschlossene Vorstellung, 89, 157, 188n22 Gespenster (Ibsen), 56 Gestapo, 23 “Getting a Handel on Hanukkah” (Segal), 122 Gewandhaus concert hall, 131 Gilbert, Shirli, 157, 168n96 Gilliam, Bryan, 167–68n82 Gleason, Ralph J., 34 Glinka, Michael, 66 Goebbels, Joseph, 4 on art by organization, 65 on Beethoven, 101 on Handel, 111 Hinkel and, 12 jazz music and, 68 on Jewish in›uence on German culture, 34–35 on music, 5, 182n100 on radio, 71 “Ten Principles of German Music Creativity,” 5 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 7, 101 Goldberg, Szymon, 160n18 Goldschlag, Gerhard, 66, 97, 116 Goldschmidt, Berthold, 66 Goldsmith, Martin, 5, 14, 73, 125, 144, 155 Göring, Hermann, 12–13 government subsidy, 19

246 Gradenwitz, Peter, 49 Graudan, Nicolai, 160n18 “Great C major Symphony” (Schubert), 98 Grillparzer, Franz, 96 Grodno, 153 group integration, as League goal, 26 group singing, 197–98n38, 198n39. See also choral genre “Grundelemente des Rundfunks, Die” (Weinbrenner), 71 Gründgens, Gustaf, 69 Guiseppe Verdi (Gerigk), 124–25 Gumpert, Martin, 25 Gustloff, Wilhelm, 46, 172n64 Guttmann, Alfred, 135 Guttmann, Julius, 17 Guttmann, Oskar criticism of League, 54–55 at Jewish Culture League Conference, 52 letter from Singer, 120 Schöpfungshymnus B’reschith, 114f Guttmann, Wilhelm (Hans-Roland), 21, 141, 208n85 HaCohen, Ruth, 129 Hamburg, 24 Hamburg League, 25, 184n133 Hamburg Temple, 96 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 69–70 Handel, George Frideric adaptations of works, 111–12, 197n32, 197n33 Belshazzar, 113, 114f censorship, 30, 108–109, 113 choral singing and, 112 compared to Verdi, 122 “Concerto Grosso in D major,” 113 English audiences and, 109–10 Israel in Egypt, 113, 114f, 121, 121f, 195n2 Israelite oratorios, 96–97, 109, 111–13, 114f, 129, 135 Joshua, 113, 114f Judas Maccabeus (See Judas Maccabeus [Handel]) League performances of, 63f music categorized as Jewish, 120–21 music performed in synagogues, 121–22 Nazi regime’s view of, 109, 110–11 Occasional Oratorio, 111 Old Testament themes, 109–10 politicization of, 108, 119–20, 122, 129–30 popularity of, 113

index reception of, 107 relocations to England and Italy, 110–11, 120 Samson, 113, 114f Saul, 113, 114f Schubert compared to, 107 Handel Commemoration, 108 Händel-Jahrbuch, 16 Hanslick, Edward, 142 Harke, C. G., 111 Hass, Pavel, 35 Hasse, Karl, 105 Hatikvah (Weill), 72 Hausegger, Siegmund von, 8 Hauskonzerte, 88–89 Hausmusik, 104, 187n15 Haydn, Joseph, 21 head coverings, 184n133 Healing Power of Music, The (Singer), 10 Hebrew Bookshop, 145 Hebrew language, 40, 80, 88, 93, 186n6 “Hebrew Songs” (Ravel), 61 Hebrew Union College, 64 Hebrides overture (Mendelssohn), 135 Heine, Heinrich, 7, 91, 188n22, 206n56, 208n90 Held und Friedenswerk (Burte), 111 Hep-Hep riots of 1819, 7 “Herbstgedicht” (Bloch), 75 Herder, Johann Godfried, 33, 75, 80, 184n135 Hermann Prey Schubert festival, 189n38 Hero and Work of Peace (Burte), 111 Herrnfeld, Anton, 19 Herrnfeld, David “Donat,” 19 Herrnfeld-Theater, 19 Hertie Company, 1 Herzl, Theodor, 8, 39, 40, 45 Herzog, Friedrich, 112 Herz-Sommer, Alice, 209n98 Heu, Alfred, 122, 200–201n88 Heydrich, Reinhard, 45 Hilberg, Raul, 156 Hiller, Ferdinand, 114f Hilmes, Oliver, 176n3 Hindemith, Paul, 4, 21 Hindenburg, Paul von, 3 Hinkel, Hans background of, 162n60 censorship and, 29–32, 70, 87, 101, 106, 109 on Jewish Culture League Conference, 54 League and, 12–13, 35, 45–46 Levie and, 150, 212n17 Mahler and, 136, 138

247

index on Nabucco, 179n55 on Nazi regime’s support of the League, 27 on puri‹cation of German culture, 30–31 support of Zionism, 40 symbiotic relationship with Singer, 13 view of Jews as controlling force in German culture, 34 view of some composers as dangerous, 68–69 Hirsch, Leo, 138, 205n50 Hirsch, Martha Sommer, 25–26 Hirschberg, Walter, 65 Hirschfeld, Robert, 136–37 Histoire du Soldat (Stravinsky), 61 Hitler, Adolf Academy of Fine Arts and, 194n105 artistic policies vs. Stalin’s, 180n59 Burte ode to, 111 linking with Beethoven, 192n88 Mendelssohn and, 136 rise to power, 3 on Vienna, 104, 194n104 Hodge, Merton, 150 Holde, Artur, 49, 93 Holde, Heida Hermanns, 49 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 138 Holl, Karl, 125, 201n89 Hollandsche Schouwburg, 211n5 home concerts, 88–89 home music, 104, 187n15 Horkheimer, Max, 33 Hornbostel, Erich Moritz von, 64 Huberman, Bronislaw, 18 humanist movement, 91 Hungary, 64 hyperin›ation, 2–3 Ibsen, Henrik, 56 Idelsohn, A. Z., 64–65, 74, 177n20, 185n147 identity. See Jewish identity identity, and music, 209n98 Imperial and Royal Training College, 91 Inextinguishable Symphony, The (Goldsmith), 5, 14 Institute for Research on the Jewish Question, 145 Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage, 145 International Red Cross, 28 intimidation of Jewish musicians, 4 Israeli national anthem, 178n30

Israel in Egypt (Handel), 113, 114f, 121, 121f, 195n2 Israelit, Der, 172n67 Israelite oratorios. See oratorios Israelitisches Familienblatt, 42, 80 Israel of Miedzibiz, 183n111 Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, 18 Israel Symphony (Bloch), 75 Italian Symphony (Mendelssohn), 135 Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 46 Jacobs, Walter, 102 Jaspers, Karl, 87 jazz music, 68, 71 Jedzek, Klaus, 69 Jeitteles, Alois Isidor, 101, 192n85 Jessner, Leopold, 1 Jewish art, differing views of, 41–42 Jewish Central Museum, 146 Jewish Choir Association, 113 Jewish composers, 4, 32–33, 51, 53, 61–63, 78. See also Jewish music; speci‹c composers Jewish councils, 14–15, 152–53 Jewish culture, 42–43, 47, 166–67n66. See also Jewish music Jewish Culture League Bloch on, 83–84 branches of, 24–25, 56 centralization of, 45 as collaborator, 14, 149, 152–55 composition competition and, 53, 65 criticisms of, 54–55 departments of, 17–18 dissolution of, 145–47 as distraction from Nazi danger, 157, 170n27 economic situation, 139–40 employment, as source of, 29 false sense of security and, 155 ‹rst season, 21–23, 38, 42–43 formation of, 5–6, 9–13, 83–84 funding, 19 Hinkel on reason for existence of, 35 as instance of cooperation between Nazi regime and Jews, 25 Kareski’s criticism of, 46 legacy of, 148–58 limitations of, 89–90 as means to purify German culture, 30–31 as means of social control, 29, 69 measure of protection offered to performers, 150, 152, 213n37

248 Jewish Culture League (continued ) membership of, 19 name change, 5, 44 program image, 151f purpose of, 16–36 resumption of performances after Kristallnacht, 150 unpublished plans for, 162n56 used for Nazi propaganda, 27–28, 149–50, 154 Zionist critique of, 41 Jewish Culture League Conference, 47–54 Adler’s speech, 51–52 Guttmann’s speech, 52 Jewish music, de‹nition of, 48, 55 (See also Jewish music) Jewish music as vocal, 50, 88 Landau’s speech, 48, 52–53, 74 Mahler and, 139 Nadel’s speech, 48–50, 65, 76 Nathan’s speech, 50–51, 75 Prinz’s speech, 52 Jewish Culture League in Germany, Inc., 56 Jewish Culture League Rhine-Ruhr, 24 Jewish Encyclopedia, 41 Jewish Folk Choir, 108 Jewish identity, 36–38, 41, 45, 55, 60–61, 170n18 Jewish liturgy. See synagogue music Jewish Madrigal Society, 92 Jewish music authenticity, 82–83 censorship of (See censorship) censorship of League repetoire, 68–70 context for valuation of, 67 Eastern European, 49–50 end of debate on, 57–59 essentialism and, 58 folk music and (See folk music) Jewish Culture League Conference as peak of interest in, 55 Jewish essence as de‹ning feature of, 78 Landau on, 53, 67 as more primitive than Western music, 81 Nadel on characteristics of, 50, 65, 81 Nathan on, 67 Nazi regime on, 30, 162n63 permanent culture and, 52 struggle to de‹ne, 37–59 subject and, 51 as symbolic resistance, 156–57 vocal vs. orchestral, 50, 88

index “Jewish Music of Our Time by Bloch, Engel, Schalit, Sternberg, Krein, Milhaud, Castelnuovo- Tedesco, Stutschewsky” (concert), 76 Jewish nationalism, 8, 38–39, 55, 156 Jewish Renaissance, 2 Jewish renewal, as League goal, 26 “Jewish research,” 145–46 Jewish resistance, 156 Jewish schools, 2, 10 Jewish State, The (Herzl), 8 Jewish Theater, 148 Jewish Theater (in Netherlands), 211n5 Jewish Winter Help, 21 Joachim, Joseph, 133 Johnny spielt auf! (Kenek), 68 Jonas, Hilda Klestadt, 14, 73, 89 Joodsche Schouwburg, 148 Joshua (Handel), 113, 114f Joshua (Klöcking), 111 “Judaism in Music” (Wagner), 32, 34, 132 Judas Maccabeus (Handel) as Jewish music, 121, 135 League performances of, 21, 113–14, 114f, 116 Old Testament themes, 118–19 politicization of, 195n5 popularity of, 142 program, 115f rehearsals of, 198n44 revisions and adaptations of, 111–12, 197n32, 197n33 themes in and emotional resonance, 116–19 use of the Bible, 198n46 written music, 117–18f in Yiddish, 108 Judenforschung, 145–46 Judenräte, 14–15, 152–53 Judentum in der Musik, Das (Berl), 81 Jüdische Gemeinde, 48 Jüdischer Kulturbund. See Jewish Culture League Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin Monatsblätter, 44 Jüdischer Kulturbund in Deutschland e.V., 56 Jüdischer Kulturbund Rhein-Ruhr, 24 Jüdischer Madrigalvereinigung, 92 Jüdische Rundschau circulation of, 170n26 critique of League, 41–42, 45 on Jewish Culture League Conference, 54 on Mahler, 136

index on Mendelssohn, 136 Nabucco translation and, 128 on Schubert, 99–100 Weltsch in, 38 Zionist Association and, 39 Jüdisches Künstlertheater, 19 Jüdisches Lexicon, 41 Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 56, 198n44, 208n85 Jüdisches Zentralmuseum, 146 Jüdische Tanz (Rathaus), 43 Jüdische Winterhilfe, 21 junge Magd, Die (Hindemith), 21 Juwal Publishing Company for Jewish Music, 2, 159n9 KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens), 1 Kameradschaftsabende, 28 Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, 12, 28 Kandinsky, Wassily, 74 Kapp, Julius, 124 Kareski, Georg, 45–47 Kassel, 24 Kastner, Rudolph, 119–20 Katz, Erich, 57, 65 Kaufman Shelemay, Kay, 58 Kiddush (Weill), 72 Kimber, Marion Wilson, 193n100 “Kindertotenlieder” (Mahler), 138 Kirschner, Emanuel, 177n20 Kivy, Peter, 32 k.k. Normalhauptschule, 91 Kleine deutsche Musikgeschichte (Moser), 133 Klemperer, Otto, 2, 17 Klemperer, Victor, 149 Klöcking, Johannes, 111 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 97, 144 Kodály, Zoltán, 64, 66, 114f Kölnische Zeitung, 102 Koonz, Claudia, 36, 104 Kopf, Leo, 21, 113, 114f Korngold, Erich Wolfgang, 4 Kötzch, Helmut, 72 Kovner, Abba, 156 Kowalski, Max, 65 Krakow Conservatory, 17 Krasa, Hans, 35 Krehbiel, Henry, 79 Krein, Alexander, 51, 66 Kr &enek, Ernst, 4, 28, 68

249 Kreuzer, Gundula, 122, 124 Krips, Josef, 18 Kristallnacht, 31, 56, 148, 150, 158 Kritik, 137 Kroll Opera, 2 Kroner, Hannah, 157 Kulturagung des Reichsverbandes der Jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland, Die. See Jewish Culture League Conference Kulturbund Deutscher Juden. See Culture League of German Jews Kulturbund Deutscher Juden Monatsblätter. See Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin Monatsblätter Kulturbund Theater, 20f Kupelwieser, Leopold, 99 Lacan, Jacques, 210n110 LaCapra, Dominick, 15 Landau, Anneliese on authentic Jewish music, 53, 67 on Bloch, 75–76 emigration of, 155 on future of Nazi regime, 154–55 German identity of, 37 on Hausmusik, 89, 187n15 at Jewish Culture League Conference, 48, 52–53, 74 letter from Bloch, 79 on Mahler, 90, 137–38, 144, 187–88n21 on Mendelssohn, 53, 132, 136 on Nathan the Wise, 22 on national music, 66 on Nazi regime’s regulations, 57 photograph of, 18f position with League, 16–17 reception of in U.S., 158 on Schoenberg, 73–74 on Schubert, 98–99, 100–101 Singer’s letter to from Holland, 158 Landau, Ludwig, 90, 139–40 Landpartie der Schubertianer von Atzenbrugg nach Aumühl (Kupelwieser), 99 Landsberger, Ernst, 17 “Landschaftsbilder” (Bloch), 75 Langbehn, Julius, 33, 168n85, 173n80 language, importance of, 184n135, 186n4. See also speci‹c languages LaSalle Quartet, 152 Law for the Reconstitution of the Civil Service, 3

250 Laws for the Defense of German Blood and Honor, 44 Lea, Henry, 142 lecture department of League, 17 Lehmann, Julian, 80 “Leiermann, Der” (Schubert), 99, 100f Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, 2 Lenart, Ernest, 148, 149, 154 Lenart, Renate, 155 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 21–22, 41, 148, 165n44 Levi, Erik, 135 Levi, Hermann, 42 Levi, Salli, 52 Levie, Alice, 155 Levie, Werner on arbitration committee, 43 demand to release Jews arrested on Kristallnacht, 150 emigration of, 155 on Hinkel, 212n17 League and, 12, 17, 56 and moving League to Palestine, 52, 55 Levine, Herbert S., 46 Levinson, Jerold, 101 Levy, Sara, 88 Lewin, Hirsch, 145 Lewin, Moritz, 145 Lexikon der Juden in der Musik (Stengel and Gerigk), 79, 133, 145, 206n57 Lieberman, Max, 2 “Lieblich ist’s dem Ew’gen danken” (M. Mendelssohn), 92 Lied. See Lieder genre Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Mahler), 60–61, 138 Lieder genre, 90, 186n9. See also speci‹c composers Lied von der Erde, Das (Mahler), 140 “Lied von Moses, Das” (Ettinger), 65, 114f Lilienfeld-Lewenz, Antoine, 122 Lindberg, Paula, 21 Lindbergh›ug, Der (Weill), 71 liturgical music, 48, 53. See also synagogue music Livingstone, Rodney, 183–84n127 Lobgesang (Mendelssohn), 113, 198n46 Locke, Ralph P., 81 Lodz ghetto, 153 London Daily Post, 195n2

index Lopatnikoff, Nicolai, 57–58 Lukraphon label, 92, 145 Mahler, Gustav Bloch compared to, 83 Brod on, 206n57 Catholic conversion, 137 censorship of, 4, 131, 176n3 critics of, 136–37 Das Lied von der Erde, 140 Davidsohn on, 206–7n63 as divided, 141–43 Eighth Symphony, 138 emotional resonance of, 141–144 expense of performing symphonies of, 139–40 First Symphony, 140, 207n64 identi‹cation with German culture, 135–38 as Jewish composer, 137–38, 206–7n63, 206n56, 207n64 Jewish Culture League Conference, 139 Jewish music and, 138–39 “Kindertotenlieder,” 138 A. Landau on, 90, 137–38, 144, 187–88n21 L. Landau on, 90, 139–40 League performances of, 63f, 140–43 Lieder, 89, 90, 136, 139–40 Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 60–61, 138 politicization of, 138–39, 206n56 reception of, 131–32, 136, 137–38, 139–41, 207n66 “Resurrection,” 141 reviews of, 137–38, 141–42 Second Symphony, 141, 142–44, 144f as suffering hero, 140 Wagner and, 138 Walter on, 206n53 “Making Handel and Bach Safe for Nazi Ears” (Manchester Guardian), 111–12 management division of League, 17 Manchester Guardian, 30, 111, 133–34 Manhattan Opera House, 68 “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (Marx and Engel), 72 Mann, Thomas, 69, 179n43 Mannheim, 24 Mannheim College of Music, 21 Mannheim National Theater, 17 marginal man, 208n92 marionette theater, 25 Marriage of Figaro, The (Mozart), 22, 42, 89

index Marrus, Michael R., 156 Marx, Karl, 72 Marxism, 69, 72 Mayer, Ludwig, 112 McClary, Susan, 103 Meinhard, Carl, 19 membership dues, 19 Mende, Käthe, 192n86 Mendelssohn, Felix attacks on legacy of, 32 Blessinger on, 132–33 censorship, 4, 131 Elijah, 35, 114f, 132, 135–36, 204n25 Hebrides overture, 135 Italian Symphony, 135 Landau on, 53, 132, 136 League performances of, 63f, 114f, 134–36 Lieder, 89 Lobgesang, 113, 198n46 Nathan on, 50, 132, 136 Old Testament themes, 135 Psalm 22, 70 Psalm 95, 113 reception of, 131–32, 204n32 removal from German canon, 132–33 reputation of in Germany, 132 Schumann and, 134, 188n24 use of the Bible, 198n46 Violin Concerto in E minor, 25, 132–133, 135 Mendelssohn, Moses as grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn, 132 “Lieblich ist’s dem Ew’gen danken,” 92 as model for Jewish integration in German culture, 6–7, 8, 22 and Nathan the Wise, 21 use of translations by Schubert, 95–96 Mensch, Peter van, 177n11 Messing, Scott, 102 Metropolitan Opera, 17, 18 Metternich, Klemens von, 89 Meyer, Henry, 22, 23, 89, 141, 152 Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 4, 32–33, 53, 91 Michaelis, Kurt, 22, 142, 150 Michalowitz, Micha, 56, 140, 141 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (Shakespeare), 120, 132–35 Mighty Handful, 66 Milhaud, Darius, 53 Milner, Levin, 51 Miriam’s Song of Triumph, 96–97 Mirjams Siegesgesang, 96–97

251 “mirror stage,” 210n110 Misch, Ludwig, 21, 42, 89, 92, 198n46, 208n85 Mitteilungsblätter des jüdischen Kulturbundes Rhein-Ruhr, 51–52 modal harmony, 81 modern culture, power of, 70–72 “Moldau, Die” (Smetena), 66 Morell, Thomas, 114 Morgen, Der, 140 Moritz, Edvard, 66 Morold, Max, 103 Mosé in Egitto (Rossini), 126–27 Moser, Hans Joachim, 133 Moser, Moses, 8 Moses, Paul, 24, 38 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus censorship, 30, 109, 196n10 Cosí fan Tutte, 109 League performances of, 63f The Marriage of Figaro, 22, 42, 89 Munich, 24, 25 Municipal Opera, 17, 21, 31 Music, Culture, and Society (Locke), 81 music, various roles of, 6, 56, 131, 140 Musica Hebraica, 54–55, 120 Musical America, 74, 78 musical collections, analysis of, 61–62 musical identity. See Jewish identity; Jewish music musical programming. See repertoire of Jewish Culture League Musikgeschichte im Umriss (Welter), 91 Musik und Rasse (Eichenauer), 102 Mussorgsky, Modest, 66, 141 My German Question (Gay), 37 “My Tears Give Birth to Flowers” (Mussorgsky), 141 Nabucco (Verdi), 108, 124–29, 127f, 135, 142, 179n55 Nadel, Arno on Bloch, 76, 182n107 on characteristics of Jewish music, 50, 65, 81 on folk music, 77 at Jewish Culture League Conference, 48–50, 65, 76 “Naiveté of Verdi, The” (Berlin), 123 Nathan, Hans on Bloch, 75 on Handel, 119

252 Nathan, Hans (continued ) at Jewish Culture League Conference, 48, 50–51, 75 on Judas Maccabeus performance, 114 on Mahler, 138–39 on Mendelssohn, 50, 132, 136 on musical tastes, 187n20 on national music, 130 practical criteria for authentic Jewish music, 67 Schoenberg and, 75, 77, 181–82n92 on Verdi, 127 Nathan the Wise (Lessing), 21–22, 41, 148, 165n44 nationalism, 57–59, 73 national music, 30, 48–49, 64, 66–67, 83, 107, 130 National Representation of German Jews, 31, 170n13 National Representation of Jews in Germany, 31, 47, 170n13 National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), 3 Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, 168n85 Nazi regime Baumann on, 27 censorship, 68 concern for family and, 194n109 critique of Jewish ‹lm composers, 167–68n82 ethnic nationalism of, 27 goals for League, 26–27 Italy and, 124–25 “Jewish research” and, 145–46 movies made by, 194n116 need for Jews to be The Other, 146, 210n110 prohibition on Jews participating in performances of German culture, 56–57 propaganda, use of League for, 27–28, 149–50, 154 on Schubert, 104 support of Zionism, 39–40, 45, 47 uses for League, 29–31, 33–36 on Verdi, 123–124 Weill, denunciation of, 68–69 negative theater, 69 Netherlands, deportations from, 211n6 Neue Madrigalvereinigung, 92 Neuendorf, Maria, 57 Neue Sachlichkeit, 8, 71 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 32

index “New Aesthetic of Musical Impotence—A Symptom of Decay, The” (P‹tzner), 8 New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The, 58 New Harvard Dictionary of Music, The, 57–58 New Madrigal Society, 92 new objectivity, 8, 71 Newsletter of the Jewish Culture League Rhine-Ruhr, 51–52 New Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse, 79, 135 New Testament themes, 109 New York Times, 22 “Night of Broken Glass.” See Kristallnacht Nilus, Sergei, 40 “Ninth Symphony” (Beethoven), 102 Norden, Albert, 197n33 NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), 3 NS-Kulturgemeinde, 111 Nuremberg Laws, 44, 46, 172n67 Obschchestvo Yevreyskoy Narodnoy Muziki, 62, 64, 66, 74, 159n9 observation, 137 Occasional Oratorio (Handel), 111 Occupational Illness of Musicians, The (Singer), 10 Offenbach, Jacques, 35, 50, 53 Ohlson, Peter, 141 Old Testament themes Handel and, 109–10 in Italian operas, 201n89 Jewish music as based on, 96 in Judas Maccabeus, 118–19 Mendelssohn and, 135 reasons for use of, 196n14 Verdi and, 126–28 Olympic Games, 46–47, 102 opera, 122–24, 201n89 opera department of League, 17 Opfersieg bei Walstatt, Der (Klöcking), 111 oratorios Biblical foundations of, 118–19, 121 as German genre, 112 Handel and, 96–97, 109, 111–12, 114f, 129, 135 Jewish identity and, 129, 135 League performances of, 114f Old Testament themes, 96–97 as staple of Jewish performance groups, 199–200n70

253

index orchestral music, 24, 50–51, 139 Orff, Carl, 134 Orientalism, music traits of, 80–82, 83 Osborn, Max, 17 Ostlandfeier, Die (Klöcking), 111 Other, The, 146, 210n110 Our Visitors (Sessa), 184n135 Palestine, 40, 52, 55 Palestine Symphony Orchestra, 18, 157 “Pathétique Sonata” (Beethoven), 102 Patmos (Hölderlin), 138 Pederson, Sanna, 103 “People’s set,” 71 performances, admission to, 21 Pernerstorfer, Engelbert, 138 Pernerstorfer Circle, 138 Petrushka, Shabtai, 68 Peyser, Herbert F., 22–23, 27 P‹tzner, Hans, 8, 124, 134 phantasmagoria, 183–84n127 “Pictures of Chassidic Life” (Bloch), 77 Piscator, Erwin, 179n46 pogroms, 3, 7–8 political criticisms, 69, 70 political discussions, prohibition on, 23–24 Political Zionism, 39 politicization of music Handel and, 108, 119–20, 122, 129–30, 195n5 Mahler and, 138–39, 206n56 Verdi and, 108, 122–25, 128–30 “Polvetzian Dances” (Borodin), 66 Ponte, Lorenzo da, 42 “Post, Die” (Schubert), 99 postwar German composers, 208–9n93 Prince Igor (Borodin), 66 Prinz, Joachim, 51, 52, 130, 174n95 “privileged” Jews, 5 propaganda Israel in Egypt and, 195n2 League as, for Nazi regime, 27–28, 149–50, 154 Schoenberg and, 28 Terezín and, 28 Propaganda Ministry, 12, 111–12, 145 Prophète, Le (Meyerbeer), 32 “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (Nilus), 40 Prussian Academy, 4 Prussian Cultural Ministry, 12 Prussian State Theater, 69 Prussian Theater Commission, 12

Prüwer, Julius, 24 Psalm 8 (Stadler), 95 Psalm 13 (Schubert), 95 Psalm 22 (Bloch), 70, 75 Psalm 23 (Schubert), 95–96, 190n47 Psalm 92 (Schubert), 92–93, 94–95f, 95, 97, 189n38 Psalm 95 (Mendelssohn), 113 Psalm 114 (Bloch), 75 “Psalmus Hungaricus” (Kodály), 66, 114f “Race, Ethnicity, Expressive Authenticity: Can White People Sing the Blues?” (Rudinow), 34 Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 167–68n82 radio, 71 Raskin, Adolf, 123 Rathaus, Karol, 43 Rational and Social Foundations of Music, The (Weber), 80–81 Ravel, Maurice, 61 recommendation letters, 155 recordings of League performances, 145, 210n103 Regen und Wind (Hodge), 150 Reich Chamber of Culture, 4, 12, 65, 109, 111 Reich Chamber of Music, 3–4, 111 Reichmann, Eva, 156 Reich Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, 4 Reichskulturkammer, 4, 12, 65, 109, 111 Reich’s Music Days, 28 Reichsmusikfestwoche, 34 Reichstheaterkammer, 111 Reichsverband der Jüdischen Kulturbünde, 24, 45–46 Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, 31, 170n13 Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland, 31, 47, 170n13 Reich Theater Chamber, 111 Reinhardt, Max, 1, 67 “Religion and Art” (Wagner), 138 Rembrandt, 33, 51 Rembrandt als Erzieher (Langbehn), 33, 173n80 repertoire of Jewish Culture League. See also speci‹c composers analysis of, 6 Baumann and, 29 Bloch and, 67 censorship (See censorship)

254 repertoire of Jewish Culture League (continued) context of, 62, 67 internal disagreements, 43 lack of music by Jewish composers in early years, 62–63 living composers and, 61 most popular composers, 63f Nazi regime’s control of, 29–32, 35, 68 performing a “Jewish repertoire,” 60–86 Schoenberg and, 67 Singer and, 25, 29–30, 60–61, 67–68, 165n36 use of Jewish music already in existence, 65–66 Weill and, 67–72 Zionists’ opinion of, 41–42 Request Concert, 102 “Resurrection” (Mahler), 141 Revisionism, 46 revival movement of 1920s, 122 Rhein, Der (Hölderlin), 138 Richman, Bruce, 197–98n38 Richter, Jean Paul, 138, 206n53 “Richtlinien für die Tätigkeit des Reichsverbandes der Jüdischen Kulturbünde in Deutschland,” 69 Rigoletto (Verdi), 125 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai, 66–67 Ringer, Alexander L., 135 Risorgimento (Verdi), 108 Romanticism, 99 Rosenberg, Alfred, 12, 30, 40, 110–11, 145–46, 166–67n66 Rosenstock, Joseph, 12, 17, 22, 25, 126, 139 Rossini, Gioachino, 126–27, 202n112 Rothmüller, Aron Marko, 93, 120, 189n39 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 123 Rovit, Rebecca, 155 Rückert, Friedrich, 138 Rudinow, Joel, 34 Rumkowski, Chaim, 153 Rundschau, 38 Ruppert, Frank, 91 Russian national music, 66 “Russische Musik (Zur Eugen Onegin-Aufführung)” (Singer), 66 Rust, Bernhard, 12 sacred music. See synagogue music Sacred Service (Bloch), 75, 79–83, 82–85f Salomon, Charlotte, 13

index “salvage anthropology,” 146 Saminsky, Lazare, 74, 76–77, 93 Samson (Handel), 113, 114f Samter, Hans, 38 Sander, Berthold, 113 Sanders Chorus, 120 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 175–76n137 Saul (Handel), 113, 114f Schalit, Heinrich, 8, 50, 53, 64–65, 66, 114f, 177n20 Schatz, Boris, 171n32 Schelomo (Bloch), 75 Schering, Arnold, 16 Schild, Der, 38, 43 Schiller, Friedrich, 7, 102, 123 Schillings, Max von, 8 Schir haschirim (Bossi), 114f Schir Zion, 92 Schnabel, Artur, 2 Schoenberg, Arnold, 2, 120 authenticity and, 74–75 Bloch on, 74–75 emigration of, 4 1st String Quartet in D minor, 73 folk music and, 77 German musical tradition and, 8 on his music as German music, 74 identity and music, 209n98 Landau on, 73–74 League performances of, 73, 76f, 181n83 League repertoire and, 67 Lieder, 89 on modern composers, 33 music of as propaganda, 28 Nathan on, 75, 77, 181–82n92 reception of, 73–75 Stengel and Gerigk on, 79 twelve-tone composition, 74–75 Ullmann and, 209n98 Verklärte Nacht, 73, 120 Schoenberg, Jakob, 64–65, 66, 99–100, 125, 181–82n92 Schoenberg Festival, 73 Schoenfeld, Joachim, 153 “schöne Müllerin, Die,” 89 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 5–6 Schöpfungshymnus B’reschith (Guttmann), 114f Schottlaender, Leo, 128 Schott publishing house, 61 Schubert, Franz, 63f, 90–106

index appeal to Jewish community, 95–97 Austria and, 103–5 Busch on, 93–95 censorship and, 30, 101 compared to Beethoven, 98, 102–3 compared to Handel and Verdi, 107 compared to Schumann, 90–91 “Dem Unendlichen,” 97 as embodiment of Vienna, 103–4 as friend of Jews, 91 “Gebet,” 21 “Gefror’ne Thränen,” 99 gendered reading of, 102–5 “Great C major Symphony,” 98 Landau on, 98–99, 100–101 “Der Leiermann,” 99, 100f Lieder, 89, 191–92n78 Nazi regime’s view of, 104 as outsider/stranger, 97–99 popularity of, 90–91, 106 “Die Post,” 99 Psalm 13, 95 Psalm 23, 95–96, 190n47 Psalm 92, 92–93, 94–95f, 95, 97, 189n38 reception of, 97 religious outlook of, 91–92 Seventh Symphony, 25 as standard-bearer of Lieder genre, 90 Sulzer and, 92–95, 189n38 synagogue music and, 92–98 “To the In‹nite One,” 97 “Un‹nished Symphony,” 98 use of M. Mendelssohn’s translations, 95–96 view of after Austrian annexation, 104–5 vocal music of, 188n31 “Der Wanderer,” 100, 190n71 Winterreise, 99, 107, 142, 190n71 Schubert, Ignaz, 91 Schubert, the Man (Bie), 98 Schumann, Clara, 133 Schumann, Robert, 89 anti-Semitism of, 91 compared to Schubert, 90–91 home concerts, 89 League ban on, 30 on Mendelssohn, 134, 188n24 Nazi regime’s view of, 188n24 on Schubert, 102 Violin Concerto and, 133 Schuster, Joseph, 160n18

255 Schwammerl (Bartsch), 97–98 Schwarz, Karl, 2 Schwarz, Rudolf, 18, 140–41, 157, 163n8 Second Symphony (Mahler), 141, 142–44, 144f Seelig-Bass, Werner, 65 Segal, Eliezer, 122 Seitenstettengasse Synagogue, 92, 93 Semer label, 145 Seventh Symphony (Schubert), 25 Sex and Character (Weininger), 103 Shakespeare, William Hamlet, 69–70 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 120, 132–35 The Winter’s Tale, 117–18f Sharp, Cecil, 48 Sid Kay’s Fellows, 68 “Simchas Torah” (Bloch), 77 Singer, Kurt, 11f attempt to make League appeal to diverse population, 42–43 Berufskrankheiten der Musiker, 10 as conductor, 21 death of, 148 as director, 22, 113 on The Eternal Road, 68 on folk music, 53 formation of League and, 10–13 German identity of, 37 Guttmann and, 55, 120 on Handel, 118–19, 120 The Healing Power of Music, 10 at Jewish Culture League Conference, 53 A. Landau on, 16 as League director, 24–25 League repertoire and, 29–30, 43–44, 60–61, 67–68, 165n36 League’s legacy and, 148–49 on Mahler, 140 on music criticism, 137 on national music, 66 The Occupational Illness of Musicians, 10 photograph of, 121f prohibition of staff political discussions, 23–24 on question of Jewish music, 50–51 reinstatement of, 46–47 relationship with Hinkel, 13 return to Europe after Kristallnacht, 148, 157–58 “Russische Musik (Zur Eugen Onegin-Aufführung),” 66

256 Singer, Kurt (continued ) in United States, 56, 211n3 unpublished plan for League, 162n56 on Verdi, 126–27 “Vom Unfug musikalischer Kritik,” 137 Wagner and, 10, 37 Wesen und Heilwirkung der Musik, 10 Zionists and, 47 Sisman, Margot Weintraub, 31 “Slavonic Dances” (Dvorá& k), 66 Smetena, Bedrich, 66 Smith, Warren Storey, 142 socialist realism, 70, 180n57 Society for Culture and Science of the Jews, 8 Society for Jewish Folk Music, 62, 64, 66, 74, 159n9 Society for the Collection and Preservation of Artistic and Historic Jewish Mementoes, 93 Society of the Friends of Jewish Music, 2 Solera, Temistocle, 126 Sommerfeld, Kurt, 43, 157 Sondheimer, Hans, 17 “Song of the Wandering Jew” (Wordsworth), 190n71 Soviet Union, 70 Spezial-Radio-Haus-Lukra, 145 Sponheuer, Bernd, 206–7n63 Sposato, Jeffrey, 135 Staatsfeindliche Zionismus, Der (Rosenberg), 40 Staatszionistische Organisation, 46 Stadler, Maximilian, 95, 96, 189n45 Stadtsverschoenerung, 28 Stalin, Joseph, 180n59 State Opera (Dresden), 93 State Zionist Organization, 46 Stefan, Paul, 138 Stein, Fritz, 111 Steinberg, Hans Wilhelm, 18, 24, 48, 80, 213n37 Steinweis, Alan, 155 Stengel, Theo, 72, 79, 133, 145, 206n57 Stephani, Hermann, 111, 197n32 Stern, Martin O., 107, 121 Sternberg, Erich Walter, 61 Sternhaim, Carl, 2 Stillmark, Alexander, 98 St. Louis (ship), 26 St. Matthew Passion (Bach), 32 Strauss, Richard, 4, 29–30, 83, 125, 134 Stravinsky, Igor, 28, 61

index Strecker, Willy, 61 Stumpf, Carl, 64 Stürmer, Der, 149 Stutschewsky, Joachim, 51, 52 Stuttgart, 24 Stuttgart Conservatory of Music, 51 Stuttgarter Jüdische Kunstgemeinschaft, 51 Sulzer, Salomon, 92–95, 189n38 Swet, Hermann, 52 “Symphony in E Minor” (Dvoák), 78 synagogue music cleansing of, 185n146 collecting, 62, 64, 65 diversity of, 51–52 folk music and, 177n20 Handel and, 121–22 as Jewish music, 48–49, 205n50 Old Testament themes, 135 Sacred Service and, 80 Schubert and, 92–98 Wagner on, 49 Tales of Hoffmann, The (Offenbach), 35 “Talmudische Rhapsodie” (Birnbaum), 95 Taruskin, Richard, 58, 87, 108, 191–92n78 Taube, Michael, 17, 21, 38 technical department of League, 17 Tennenbaum, Silvia, 23 “Ten Principles of German Music Creativity” (Goebbels), 5 Terezín, 5, 28, 35, 148, 152, 209n98 Thein, Hanus, 35 Theresienstadt, 5, 28, 204n25. See also Terezín Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies (Idelsohn), 64–65 “Third Symphony” (Beethoven), 102 Three Choir Festival, 93 Thrum, Gerhard, 208n90 Tietjen, Heinz, 10 Tietz, Hermann, 1 Titan (Richter), 138 Toch, Ernst, 4, 61 Toeplitz, Erich, 213n37 Toller, Ernst, 2 “To the In‹nite One” (Schubert), 97 Traviata, La (Verdi), 125–26 Treitler, Kurt, 19 Trois Poèmes Juifs (Bloch), 75 Tschaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, 63f, 66 twelve-tone composition, 74–75 Tzur Yisroel, 80

index Ullmann, Viktor, 144, 209n98 “Un‹nished Symphony” (Schubert), 98 Union Prayerbook, 80 United Synagogue Choirs, 2 University and Academy of Music in Vienna, 17 “Unpacking My Library” (Benjamin), 61–62 “Va Pensiero” (Verdi), 129f Variations on a Palestine Shepherd’s Song (Goldschmidt), 66 Verdi, Guiseppe censorship of, 124 compared to Handel, 122 Ein Maskenball, 125 La forza del destino, 124, 200–201n88 La Traviata, 125–26 League performances of, 63f, 125–26 Nabucco, 108, 124–29, 127f, 135, 142, 179n55 Nazi regime’s view of, 123–24 Old Testament themes, 126–28 peasant roots of, 123, 200n82 politicization of, 108, 122–25, 128–30 popularity of, 107 reception of, 126 Rigoletto, 125 Risorgimento, 108 Rossini and, 202n112 Schubert compared to, 107 “Va Pensiero,” 129f Verdi Renaissance, 122–23 Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, 8 Verfremdung, 69 Verklärte Nacht (Schoenberg), 73, 120 Versailles Peace Treaty, 2–3 Vetter, Walther, 192n88 Vienna, 103–4, 187n11, 194n104 Vienna Architectural School, 194n105 Vienna Philharmonic, 17 Vienna Staatsoper, 131 Viennese salons, 88–89 Vilna Ghetto, 156 Violin Concerto (Rimsky-Korsakov), 66 Violin Concerto in E minor (Mendelssohn), 25, 132–33, 135 vocal music, 50, 88, 90, 97 Volk folk music and, 48 German music and, 35 Handel and, 112

257 Langbehn on, 33 language and, 184n135 Lied and, 105 Marxism and, 72 Nazi regime on, 173n80 Zionists and, 170n18 Volksempfänger, 71 Volksgeist, 75, 80, 183n25 “Vom Unfug musikalischer Kritik” (Singer), 137 Vorwärts (newspaper), 10 Vossische Zeitung (newspaper), 17 Wachsman, Margot, 37 Wagner, Richard anti-Semitic writings, 49, 167n79 association with opera, 123 censorship and, 29–30 on Herder, 80 on Jewish composers, 32–33 on Jewish in›uence on German culture, 34 “Judaism in Music,” 32, 34, 132 Mahler and, 138 “Religion and Art,” 138 Singer’s research on, 10, 37 on synagogue music, 49 Walcher, Ferdinand, 91 Walter, Bruno, 2, 4, 17, 32, 206n53, 207n66 Walterhausen, Hermann, 8 Walter-Rosenbaum, Gerhard, 38 Wanderbund Blauweiss, 170n18 “Wanderer, Der” (Schubert), 93, 100, 190n71 Wangemann, Otto, 112 Warsaw Ghetto, 35 Wassermann, Jakob, 1, 159n2 “Wear the Yellow Patch with Pride” (Weltsch), 38 Weber, Max, 80–81, 82 Weill, Kurt association with Brecht, 69, 72 Aufsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, 69 as composer, 2, 28 critiques of, 72 Das Berliner Requiem, 71 denouced by Nazi regime, 68–69 Der Lindbergh›ug, 71 Dreigroschenoper, 68 emigration of, 4 The Eternal Road, 67–68, 72 Hatikvah, 72 Hitler’s view of as alien in›uence, 179n43

258 Weill, Kurt (continued ) identity and music, 209n98 jazz music and, 8, 68 Kiddush, 72 League repertoire and, 67–72 on opera, 123 as threat to Nazi regime, 70–71 Weimar era, 3, 8 Weinbaum, Alexander, 21 Weinberg, Jacob, 66, 114f Weinbrenner, Hans-Joachim, 71 Weininger, Otto, 103, 193n100 Weisgal, Meyer, 67–68 Weissmann, Adolf, 123, 142 Welter, Friedrich, 72, 91 Weltsch, Robert, 38 Werfel, Franz, 2, 67–68, 72, 122, 124, 200–201n88 Wesen und Heilwirkung der Musik (Singer), 10 Wiener, Karl, 134, 140, 141–42, 198n46 Wilhelmus von Nassauen (Klöcking), 111 Williams, Ralph Vaughan, 57 Winawer, Chemjo, 66 Winawer Hanigun Choir, 66 Wind and the Rain, The (Hodge), 150 wind players, shortage of, 89 Winterreise (Schubert), 99, 107, 142, 190n71 Winter’s Tale, The (Shakespeare), 117–18f Wisten, Fritz, 56, 147 Wisten-Weyl, Susanna, 141 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 136–37 Wolf, Hugo, 90, 91 Wolfe, Thomas, 103 Wollong, Ernst, 111 Wordsworth, William, 190n71 World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine,

index 52, 54, 120–121 Wort, Das, 197n33 Yale University, 211n3 Yiddish folk songs, 37, 50, 205n50 “Youngest Daughter Married, The” (Yiddish wedding song), 77 Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 211n3 “Zehn Grundsätze deutschen Musikschaffens” (Goebbels), 5 Zeitschriftenschau, 16 Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 16 Zemlinsky, Alexander von, 4 Zerrissenheit, 208n90 Zertstörung Jerusalems, Die (Hiller), 114f “Zeugnisse,” 155 Zhdanov, A. A., 70 Ziegler, Hans Severus, 28 Zionism anti-Semitism and, 38 founding of, 8 Nazi regime support of, 39–40, 45, 47 Zionist Association, 39, 46, 54 Zionists. See also German Zionists cultural zionism, 39, 187n12 formation of League and, 10 in›uence of in League, 46 on League repetoire, 39, 41–42 Nazi regime’s support of, 39–40, 45, 47 political zionism, 39 on Volk, 170n18 Zivi, Hermann, 51 Zukmann-Bizony, Cilly, 97 Zunz, Leopold, 7–8 Zweig, Arnold, 1